(   UNIVERSITY  ) 

OF 


PROTECTING   THE    LADIES 


FO  LLOWI  N  G 
THE      EQUATOR 

A  JOURNEY  AROUND  THE  WORLD 
BY  MARK  TWAIN 


ILLUSTRATED 


VOL.  I. 


NEW  YORK  AND  LONDON 
HARPER  &  BROTHERS  PUBLISHERS 


OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


70  u- 


.;  .UNIFORM  EDITION  OF 
MARK      TWAIN'S      WORKS 

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A  CONNECTICUT  YANKEE.     Illustrated.  i-75 

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PRINCE  AND    PAUPER.      Illustrated.  i-75 

LIFE  ON  THE    MISSISSIPPI.      Illustrated.  1.75 
THE  MAN  THAT   CORRUPTED    HADLEYBURG 

Etc.     Illustrated.  1.75 

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EVE'S  DIARY.      Illustrated.  i.oo 

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THE  JUMPING  FROG.     Illustrated.  i.oo 

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A   DOUBLE-BARRELLED    DETECTIVE   STORY. 

Illustrated.  i .  50 


Copyright,  1897  and  1899,  by  OLIVIA  L.  CLEMENS. 
(All  rights  reserved.) 


PSI3IO 
A  I 


vM-2- 


THIS   book  is  affectionately  inscribed  to  my 
young  friend  Harry  Rogers,  with  recogni 
tion  of  what  he  is,  and  apprehension  of  what  he 
may  become  unless  he  form  himself  a  little  more 
closely  upon  the  model  of          THE  AUTHOR 


207650 


THE  PUDD'NHEAD  MAXIMS 


THESE  WISDOMS   ARE   FOR    THE    LURING    OF   YOUTH 

TOWARD   HIGH  MORAL  ALTITUDES.     THE  AUTHOR 

DID  NOT  GATHER  THEM  FROM  PRACTICE,  BUT 

FROM  OBSERVATION.    TO  BE  GOOD  IS  NOBLE; 

BUT  TO  SHOW  OTHERS  HOW  TO  BE  GOOD 

IS  NOBLER  AND  NO  TROUBLE. 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

PROTECTING    THE    LADIES Frontispiece 

THE    OLD    SETTLERS Facing    p.     194 

THE  GOVERNOR'S  PROCLAMATION      ....  266 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I. 

The  Party  —  Across  America  to  Vancouver  —  On  the  Steamer 
Warrimo  —  The  Captain  —  The  Brightest  Passenger  —  Rem 
edy  for  Bad  Habits  —  Remittance-men 15 

CHAPTER  II. 

Change  of  Costume  —  Fish,  Snake,  and  Boomerang  Stories — Tests 
of  Memory  —  A  Brahmin  Expert  —  General  Grant's  Memory 
—  A  Delicately  Improper  Tale 26 

CHAPTER  III. 

Honolulu  —  Reminiscences  of  the  Sandwich  Islands  —  King  Liho- 
liho  and  His  Royal  Equipment  —  The  Tabu  — A  Kanaka 
Diver  —  Honolulu,  Past  and  Present  — The  Leper  Colony  .  41 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Leaving  Honolulu  —  The  Front  Yard  of  the  Ship  —  Crossing  the 
Equator — The  Waterbury  Watch  —  The  Loss  of  a  Day  — 
A  Babe  without  a  Birthday 59 

CHAPTER  V. 

A  Lesson  in  Pronunciation —  Reverence  for  Robert  Burns  —  The 
Southern  Cross  —  Islands  on  the  Map  —  Alofa  and  Fortuna  -— 
Recruiting  for  the  Plantations — Captain  Warren's  Note-Book  72 

CHAPTER  VI. 

Missionaries  Obstruct  Business  —  The  Sugar  Planter  and  the  Ka 
naka —  The  Planter's  View  —  The  Missionary's  View  —  The 
Death  Rate  in  Queensland 80 


x  Contents 

CHAPTER  VII. 

The  Fiji  Islands  —  Suva  —  The  Ship  from  Duluth  —  Midwinter  in 
Fiji  — Why  Fiji  was  Ceded  to  England  —  Old  Time  Fijians  — 
Immortality  with  Limitations 89 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

A  Wilderness  of  Islands  —  A  Naturalist  from  New  Zealand  —  The 
Fauna  of  Australasia  —  Animals,  Insects,  and  Birds — The 
Ornithorhyncus  —  Poetry  and  Plagiarism 98 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Australia — Porpoises  at  Night  —  The  Harbor  and  City  of  Sydney 
—  Climate  —  Information  for  Travelers  —  Size  of  Australia  — 
Dust-Storm  and  Hot  Wind 107 

CHAPTER  X. 

The  Discovery  of  Australia  —  Transportation  of  Convicts  —  Disci 
pline  —  English  Laws,  Ancient  and  Modern  —  Arrival  of  Set 
tlers —  Development  of  the  Country  —  Immense  Resources  .  119 

CHAPTER  XL 

Hospitality  of  English-speakers — Sydney  an  English  City  with  Ameri 
can  Trimmings  —  "Squatters"  —  Wool  and  Mutton  —  Aus 
tralians  and  Americans  — Table  Talk  —  Australian  Audiences  125 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Mr.  X.,  a  Missionary  —  Why  Christianity  Makes  Slow  Progress  in 
India  —  A  Large  Dream  —  Hindoo  Miracles  and  Legends  — 
Samson  and  Hanuman  —  Where  are  the  Gates?  .  .  .  .132 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

Public  Works  in  Australasia  —  Botanical  Garden  of  Sydney  —  Four 
Special  Socialties  —  Shark  Fishing  —  Cecil  Rhodes'  Shark  and 
his  First  Fortune — Free  Board  for  Sharks 136 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

To  Melbourne  by  Rail  — The  Colony  of  Victoria— A  Peculiarity  at 
Albury  —  Customs- fences  —  "  My  Word  "  —  Rabbit  Piles  — 
Government  Restaurants  —  "  Sheep-dip  "  —  Railroad  Coffee  .  149 


Contents  xi 

CHAPTER  XV. 

Wagga-Wagga  —  Tichborne  Claimant — A  Stock  Mystery  —  Plan 
of  the  Romance  —  Realization  —  The  Henry  Bascom  Mystery 

—  The  Author's  Death  and  Funeral 155 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

Melbourne  and  its  Attractions  —  The  Melbourne  Cup  Races  —  Cup 
Day — The  Australian  Larrikin — Is  He  Dead?  —  Australian 
Hospitality  —  Museums  —  Palaces  —  Origin  of  Melbourne  .  162 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

The  British  Empire  — The  Trade  of  Australia— To  Adelaide  — 
Broken  Hill  Silver  Mine — The  Scrub  and  its  Possibilities  — 
The  Aboriginal  Tracker  — A  Test  Case 1 71 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

Gum  Trees  —  Gorse  and  Broom  —  An  Adventurer  —  Unique  Busi 
ness  by  One  Man  — Everything  Comes  to  Him  who  Waits  — 
Healthy  Religious  Atmosphere ..179 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

Public  Gardens  of  Adelaide  —  Laughing  Jdckass  —  The  Dingo  — 
Mania  for  Holidays  —  Temperature  —  Old  Settlers  at  a  Ban 
quet —  Intelligence  of  the  Aboriginal — The  Boomerang  .  .189 

CHAPTER  XX. 

A  Caller  —  A  Talk  about  Old  Times —The  Fox  Hunt  —  An  Accu 
rate  Judgment  of  an  Idiot  —  How  We  Passed  the  Customs 
Officers  in  Italy 198 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

The  "  Weet-Weet  "  —  Victoria  —  Killing  the  Aboriginals  —  Pio 
neer  Days  in  Queensland  —  The  Bush  —  Pudding  with  Arsenic 

—  Revenge 207 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

Aboriginals  Continued  —  Manly  Qualities  —  Athletic  Sports  — 
Where  the  Kangaroo  Learned  its  Art  —  Well  Digging  —  En 
durance  —  Surgery  —  Artistic  Abilities  —  Australian  Slang  .  217 


xii  Contents 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

Horsham  —  Pepper   Tree — Agricultural    College — Fruit    Trees 

—  Soils  —  Sheep  Shearing  —  To  Stawell  —  Gold  Mining  Coun 
try  —  Grapes  and  Wine  —  The  Three  Sisters  —  Gum  Trees     .  227 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 

Road  to  Ballarat  —  The  City  —  Gold  Strike,  1851  —  Rush  for  Aus 
tralia  —  Taxation  —  Revolt  —  The  Eureka  Stockade  —  "  Pen 
cil  Mark  "  —  Statuary  at  Ballarat  — -  Ballarat  English  .  .  .236 

CHAPTER  XXV. 

Bound  for  Bendigo  —  The  Priest  at  Castlemaine  —  A  Valuable  Nug 
get —  Mr.  Blank  and  His  Influence  —  Corrigan  Castle  and  the 
Mark  Twain  Club 245 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

Where  New  Zealand  Is —  But  Few  Know — Things  People  Think 

They  Know— The  Yale  Professor  and  His  Visitor  from  N.  Z.  258 

CHAPTER  XXVII. 

The  South  Pole  Swell  —  Tasmania  —  Extermination  of  the  Natives 

—  The  Picture  Proclamation  —  The  Conciliator  —  The  Formi 
dable  Sixteen 264 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

When  the  Moment  Comes  the  Man  Appears  —  Why  Ed.  Jackson 
called  on  Commodore  Vanderbilt  —  Sent  on  Important  Busi 
ness — A  Visit  to  the  Boys  on  the  Boat 277 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

Tasmania,  Early  Days — Town  of  Hobart — Neatest  City  on 
Earth  —  Museum  —  Parrot  with  an  Acquired  Taste  —  Glass 
Arrow  Heads  —  Refuge  for  the  Indigent 288 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

At  Bluff,  N.  Z.—  Where  the  Rabbit  Plague  Began  —  Dunedin  — 
Visit  to  Dr.  Hockin  —  His  Museum  —  Unperfected  Tape 
Worm  —  Public  Museum  and  Picture  Gallery 297 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 
The  Express  Train —  "  A  Hell  of   a  Hotel  at  Maryborough  "  — 

Clocks  and  Bells  —  Railroad  Service 303 


Contents  xiii 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 
Town  of  Christ  Church  —  Museum —  Jade-stone  — The  Great  Moa 

—  First  Maori  in  New  Zealand —  "  Person  "  Includes  Woman 

—  Taming  an  Ornithorhyncus  —  Voyage  in  the  Flora    .     .     .31! 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

The  Town  of  Nelson — "The  Mongatapu  Murders'*  —  Mount 
Eden — Rotorua  and  the  Hot  Lakes  and  Geysers — Thermal 
Springs  District  —  Kauri  Gum  —  Tangariwa  Mountains  .  .  320 

CHAPTER  XXXIV. 

Bay  of  Gisborne  —  Taking  Passengers  by  the  Yard  Arm — Green 
Ballarat  Fly  —  False  Teeth  —  Napier  to  Hastings  by  the  Bal- 
larat  Fly  Train  —  Kauri  Trees  —  Mental  Telegraphy  .  .  .  327 

CHAPTER  XXXV. 

Fifty  Miles  in  Four  Hours  —  Comfortable  Cars  —  Town  of  Wauga- 
nui  —  Plenty  of  Maoris — The  Missionary  Ways  all  Wrong  — 
The  Tabu  —  A  Mysterious  Sign  —  Wellington 332 

CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

Poems  of  Mrs.  Moore  —  Sad  Fate  of  William  Upson  —  Imitating 
the  Prince  of  Wales  —  A  Would-be  Dude  —  Arrival  at  Sydney 
—Curious  Town  Names  with  Poem 339 


FOLLOWING   THE   EQUATOR 


<j$ 

A      >  V-' 

A-  v 


fi/^.  A'    x 


CHAPTER   I. 

A  man  may  have  no  bad  habits  and  have  worse. 

—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  starting  point  of    this  lecturing-trip  around 
the  world  was  Paris,  where  we  had  been  living 
a  year  or  two. 

We  sailed  for  America,  and  there  made  certain 
preparations.  This  took  but  little  time.  Two  mem 
bers  of  my  family  elected  to  go  with  me.  Also  a 
carbuncle.  The  dictionary  says  a  carbuncle  is  a 
kind  of  jewel.  Humor  is  out  of  place  in  a  dic 
tionary. 

We  started  westward  from  New  York  in  mid 
summer,  with  Major  Pond  to  manage  the  platform- 
business  as  far  as  the  Pacific.  It  was  warm  work,' 
all  the  way,  and  the  last  fortnight  of  it  was  suffo 
catingly  smoky,  for  in  Oregon  and  British  Columbia 
the  forest  fires  were  raging.  We  had  an  added 
week  of  smoke  at  the  seaboard,  where  we  were 
obliged  to  wait  awhile  for  our  ship.  She  had  been 
getting  herself  ashore  in  the  smoke,  and  she  had  to 
be  docked  and  repaired.  We  sailed  at  last;  and  so 
ended  a  snail-paced  march  across  the  continent, 
which  had  lasted  forty  days. 

(IS) 


16  Following  the  Equator 

We  moved  westward  about  mid-afternoon  over  a 
rippled  and  sparkling  summer  sea;  an  enticing  sea, 
a  clean  and  cool  sea,  and  apparently  a  welcome  sea 
to  all  on  board;  it  certainly  was  to  me,  after  the 
distressful  dustings  and  smokings  and  swelterings  of 
the  past  weeks.  The  voyage  would  furnish  a  three- 
weeks  holiday,  with  hardly  a  break  in  it.  We  had 
the  whole  Pacific  Ocean  in  front  of  us,  with  nothing 
to  do  but  do  nothing  and  be  comfortable.  The  city 
of  Victoria  was  twinkling  dim  in  the  deep  heart  of 
her  smoke-cloud,  and  getting  ready  to  vanish ;  and 
now  we  closed  the  field-glasses  and  sat  down  on  our 
steamer  chairs  contented  and  at  peace.  But  they 
went  to  wreck  and  ruin  under  us  and  brought  us  to 
shame  before  all  the  passengers.  They  had  been 
furnished  by  the  largest  furniture-dealing  house  in 
Victoria,  and  were  worth  a  couple  of  farthings  a 
dozen,  though  they  had  cost  us  the  price  of  honest 
chairs.  In  the  Pacific  and  Indian  Oceans  one  must 
still  bring  his  own  deck-chair  on  board  or  go  with 
out,  just  as  in  the  old  forgotten  Atlantic  times  — 
those  Dark  Ages  of  sea  travel. 

Ours  was  a  reasonably  comfortable  ship,  with  the 
customary  sea-going  fare  —  plenty  of  good  food 
furnished  by  the  Deity  and  cooked  by  the  devil. 
The  discipline  observable  on  board  was  perhaps  as 
good  as  it  is  anywhere  in  the  Pacific  and  Indian 
Oceans.  The  ship  was  not  very  well  arranged  for 
tropical  service;  but  that  is  nothing,  for  this  is  the 
rule  for  ships  which  ply  in  the  tropics.  She  had  an 


Following  the  Equator  17 

over-supply  of  cockroaches,  but  this  is  also  the  rule 
with  ships  doing  business  in  the  summer  seas  —  at 
least  such  as  have  been  long  in  service. 

Our  young  captain  was  a  very  handsome  man, 
tall  and  perfectly  formed,  the  very  figure  to  show 
up  a  smart  uniform's  finest  effects.  He  was  a  man 
of  the  best  intentions,  and  was  polite  and  courteous 
even  to  courtliness.  There  was  a  soft  grace  and 
finish  about  his  manners  which  made  whatever  place 
he  happened  to  be  in  seem  for  the  moment  a 
drawing-room.  He  avoided  the  smoking-room.  He 
had  no  vices.  He  did  not  smoke  or  chew  tobacco 
or  take  snuff;  he  did  not  swear,  or  use  slang,  or 
rude,  or  coarse,  or  indelicate  language,  or  make 
puns,  or  tell  anecdotes,  or  laugh  intemperately,  or 
raise  his  voice  above  the  moderate  pitch  enjoined  by 
the  canons  of  good  form.  When  he  gave  an  order, 
his  manner  modified  it  into  a  request.  After  dinner 
he  and  his  officers  joined  the  ladies  and  gentlemen 
in  the  ladies'  saloon,  and  shared  in  the  singing  and 
piano  playing,  and  helped  turn  the  music.  He  had 
a  sweet  and  sympathetic  tenor  voice,  and  used  it 
with  taste  and  effect.  After  the  music  he  played 
whist  there,  always  with  the  same  partner  and  op 
ponents,  until  the  ladies'  bedtime.  The  electric 
lights  burned  there  as  late  as  the  ladies  and  their 
friends  might  desire,  but  they  were  not  allowed  to 
burn  in  the  smoking-room  after  eleven.  There  were 
many  laws  on  the  ship's  statute  book,  of  course; 
but,  so  far  as  I  could  see,  this  and  one  other  were 
2* 


18  Following  the  Equator 

the  only  ones  that  were  rigidly  enforced.  The  cap 
tain  explained  that  he  enforced  this  one  because  his 
own  cabin  adjoined  the  smoking-room,  and  the 
smell  of  tobacco  smoke  made  him  sick.  I  did  not 
see  how  our  smoke  could  reach  him,  for  the 
smoking-room  and  his  cabin  were  on  the  upper 
deck,  targets  for  all  the  winds  that  blew;  and  be 
sides  there  was  no  crack  of  communication  between 
them,  no  opening  of  any  sort  in  the  solid  inter 
vening  bulkhead.  Still,  to  a  delicate  stomach  even 
imaginary  smoke  can  convey  damage. 

The  captain,  with  his  gentle  nature,  his  polish, 
his  sweetness,  his  moral  and  verbal  purity,  seemed 
pathetically  out  of  place  in  his  rude  and  autocratic 
vocation.  It  seemed  another  instance  of  the  irony 
of  fate. 

He  was  going  home  under  a  cloud.  The  passen 
gers  knew  about  his  trouble,  and  were  sorry  for 
him.  Approaching  Vancouver  through  a  narrow 
and  difficult  passage  densely  befogged  with  smoke 
from  the  forest  fires,  he  had  had  the  ill-luck  to  lose 
his  bearings  and  get  his  ship  on  the  rocks.  A 
matter  like  this  would  rank  merely  as  an  error  with 
you  and  me ;  it  ranks  as  a  crime  with  the  directors 
of  steamship  companies.  The  captain  had  been 
tried  by  the  Admiralty  Court  at  Vancouver,  and  its 
verdict  had  acquitted  him  of  blame.  But  that  was 
insufficient  comfort.  A  sterner  court  would  examine 
the  case  in  Sydney  —  the  Court  of  Directors,  the 
lords  of  a  company  in  whose  ships  the  captain  had 


Following  the  Equator  19 

served   as   mate  a  number  of  years.     This  was  his 
first  voyage  as  captain. 

The  officers  of  our  ship  were  hearty  and  com 
panionable  young  men,  and  they  entered  into  the 
general  amusements  and  helped  the  passengers  pass 
the  time.  Voyages  in  the  Pacific  and  Indian  Oceans 
are  but  pleasure  excursions  for  all  hands.  Our 
purser  was  a  young  Scotchman  who  was  equipped 
with  a  grit  that  was  remarkable.  He  was  an  invalid, 
and  looked  it,  as  far  as  his  body  was  concerned, 
but  illness  could  not  subdue  his  spirit.  He  was  full 
of  life,  and  had  a  gay  and  capable  tongue.  To  all 
appearances  he  was  a  sick  man  without  being  aware 
of  it,  for  he  did  not  talk  about  his  ailments,  and  his 
bearing  and  conduct  were  those  of  a  person  in  robust 
health ;  yet  he  was  the  prey,  at  intervals,  of  ghastly 
sieges  of  pain  in  his  heart.  These  lasted  many 
hours,  and  while  the  attack  continued  he  could 
neither  sit  nor  lie.  In  one  instance  he  stood  on  his 
feet  twenty-four  hours  fighting  for  his  life  with  these 
sharp  agonies,  and  yet  was  as  full  of  life  and  cheer 
and  activity  the  next  day  as  if  nothing  had  hap 
pened. 

The  brightest  passenger  in  the  ship,  and  the  most 
interesting  and  felicitous  talker,  was  a  young  Cana 
dian  who  was  not  able  to  let  the  whisky  bottle 
alone.  He  was  of  a  rich  and  powerful  family,  and 
could  have  had  a  distinguished  career  and  abundance 
of  effective  help  toward  it  if  he  could  have  con 
quered  his  appetite  for  drink ;  but  he  could  not  do 


20  Following  the  Equator 

it,  so  his  great  equipment  of  talent  was  of  no  use  to 
him.  He  had  often  taken  the  pledge  to  drink  no 
more,  and  was  a  good  sample  of  what  that  sort  of 
unwisdom  can  do  for  a  man  —  for  a  man  with  any 
thing  short  of  an  iron  will.  The  system  is  wrong  in 
two  ways:  it  does  not  strike  at  the  root  of  the 
trouble,  for  one  thing,  and  to  make  a  pledge  of  any 
kind  is  to  declare  war  against  nature ;  for  a  pledge 
is  a  chain  that  is  always  clanking  and  reminding  the 
wearer  of  it  that  he  is  not  a  free  man. 

I  have  said  that  the  system  does  not  strike  at  the 
root  of  the  trouble,  and  I  venture  to  repeat  that. 
The  root  is  not  the  drinking,  but  the  desire  to 
drink.  These  are  very  different  things.  The  one 
merely  requires  will  —  and  a  great  deal  of  it,  both 
as  to  bulk  and  staying  capacity  —  the  other  merely 
requires  watchfulness  —  and  for  no  long  time.  The 
desire  of  course  precedes  the  act,  and  should  have 
one's  first  attention;  it  can  do  but  little  good  to 
refuse  the  act  over  and  over  again,  always  leaving 
the  desire  unmolested,  unconquered ;  the  desire  will 
continue  to  assert  itself,  and  will  be  almost  sure  to 
win  in  the  long  run.  When  the  desire  intrudes,  it 
should  be  at  once  banished  out  of  the  mind.  One 
should  be  on  the  watch  for  it  all  the  time  —  other 
wise  it  will  get  in.  It  must  be  taken  in  time  and 
not  allowed  to  get  a  lodgment.  A  desire  constantly 
repulsed  for  a  fortnight  should  die,  then.  That 
should  cure  the  drinking  habit.  The  system  of  re 
fusing  the  mere  act  of  drinking,  and  leaving  the 


Following  the  Equator  21 

desire  in  full  force,  is  unintelligent  war  tactics,  it 
seems  to  me, 

I  used  to  take  pledges  —  and  soon  violate  them. 
My  will  was  not  strong,  and  I  could  not  help  it. 
And  then,  to  be  tied  in  any  way  naturally  irks  an 
otherwise  free  person  and  makes  him  chafe  in  his 
bonds  and  want  to  get  his  liberty.  But  when  I 
finally  ceased  from  taking  definite  pledges,  and 
merely  resolved  that  I  would  kill  an  injurious  desire, 
but  leave  myself  free  to  resume  the  desire  and  the 
habit  whenever  I  should  choose  to  do  so,  I  had  no 
more  trouble.  In  five  days  I  drove  out  the  desire 
to  smoke  and  was  not  obliged  to  keep  watch  after 
that ;  and  I  never  experienced  any  strong  desire  to 
smoke  again.  At  the  end  of  a  year  and  a  quarter 
of  idleness  I  began  to  write  a  book,  and  presently 
found  that  the  pen  was  strangely  reluctant  to  go.  I 
tried  a  smoke  to  see  if  that  would  help  me  out  of 
the  difficulty.  It  did.  I  smoked  eight  or  ten  cigars 
and  as  many  pipes  a  day  for  five  months ;  finished 
the  book,  and  did  not  smoke  again  until  a  year  had 
gone  by  and  another  book  had  to  be  begun. 

I  can  quit  any  of  my  nineteen  injurious  habits  at 
any  time,  and  without  discomfort  or  inconvenience. 
I  think  that  the  Dr.  Tanners  and  those  others  who 
go  forty  days  without  eating  do  it  by  resolutely 
keeping  out  the  desire  to  eat,  in  the  beginning;  and 
that  after  a  few  hours  the  desire  is  discouraged  and 
comes  no  more. 

Once  I  tried  my  scheme  in  a  large  medical  way. 


22  Following  the  Equator 

I  had  been  confined  to  my  bed  several  days  with 
lumbago.  My  case  refused  to  improve.  Finally 
the  doctor  said : 

"My  remedies  have  no  fair  chance.  Consider 
what  they  have  to  fight,  besides  the  lumbago.  You 
smoke  extravagantly,  don't  you?" 

"Yes." 

"  You  take  coffee  immoderately?" 

"Yes." 

"And  some  tea?" 

"Yes." 

"You  eat  all  kinds  of  things  that  are  dissatisfied 
with  each  other's  company?" 

"Yes." 

"  You  drink  two  hot  Scotches  every  night?" 

"Yes." 

"  Very  well,  there  you  see  what  I  have  to  contend 
against.  We  can't  make  progress  the  way  the 
matter  stands.  You  must  make  a  reduction  in  these 
things ;  you  must  cut  down  your  consumption  of 
them  considerably  for  some  days." 

"  I  can't,  doctor." 

"Why  can't  you?  " 

"I  lack  the  will-power.  I  can  cut  them  off  en 
tirely,  but  I  can't  merely  moderate  them." 

He  said  that  that  would  answer,  and  said  he  would 
come  around  in  twenty-four  hours  and  begin  work 
again.  He  was  taken  ill  himself  and  could  not 
come;  but  I  did  not  need  him.  I  cut  off  all  those 
things  for  two  days  and  nights ;  in  fact,  I  cut  off  all 


Following  the  Equator  23 

kinds  of  food,  too,  and  all  drinks  except  water,  and 
at  the  end  of  the  forty-eight  hours  the  lumbago  was 
discouraged  and  left  me.  I  was  a  well  man;  so  I 
gave  thanks  and  took  to  those  delicacies  again. 

It  seemed  a  valuable  medical  course,  and  I  recom 
mended  it  to  a  lady.  She  had  run  down  and  down 
and  down,  and  had  at  last  reached  a  point  where 
medicines  no  longer  had  any  helpful  effect  upon 
her.  I  said  I  knew  I  could  put  her  upon  her  feet  in 
a  week.  It  brightened  her  up,  it  filled  her  with 
hope,  and  she  said  she  would  do  everything  I  told 
her  to  do.  So  I  said  she  must  stop  swearing  and 
drinking  and  smoking  and  eating  for  four  days,  and 
then  she  would  be  all  right  again.  And  it  would 
have  happened  just  so,  I  know  it;  but  she  said  she 
could  not  stop  swearing  and  smoking  and  drinking, 
because  she  had  never  done  those  things.  So  there 
it  was.  She  had  neglected  her  habits,  and  hadn't 
any.  Now  that  they  would  have  come  good,  there 
were  none  in  stock.  She  had  nothing  to  fall  back 
on.  She  was  a  sinking  vessel,  with  no  freight  in 
her  to  throw  overboard  and  lighten  ship  withal. 
Why,  even  one  or  two  little  bad  habits  could  have 
saved  her,  but  she  was  just  a  moral  pauper.  When 
she  could  have  acquired  them  she  was  dissuaded  by 
her  parents,  who  were  ignorant  people  though 
reared  in  the  best  society,  and  it  was  too  late  to 
begin  now.  It  seemed  such  a  pity;  but  there  was 
no  help  for  it.  These  things  ought  to  be  attended 
to  while  a  person  is  young;  otherwise,  when  age 


24  Following  the  Equator 

and  disease  come,  there  is  nothing  effectual  to  fight 
them  with. 

When  I  was  a  youth  I  used  to  take  all  kinds  of 
pledges,  and  do  my  best  to  keep  them,  but  I  never 
could,  because  I  didn't  strike  at  the  root  of  the 
habit  —  the  desire;  I  generally  broke  down  within 
the  month.  Once  I  tried  limiting  a  habit.  That 
worked  tolerably  well  for  a  while.  I  pledged  myself 
to  smoke  but  one  cigar  a  day.  I  kept  the  cigar 
waiting  until  bedtime,  then  I  had  a  luxurious  time 
with  it.  But  desire  persecuted  me  every  day  and 
all  daylong;  so,  within  the  week  I  found  myself 
hunting  for  larger  cigars  than  I  had  been  used  to 
smoke;  then  larger  ones  still,  and  still  larger  ones. 
Within  the  fortnight  I  was  getting  cigars  made  for 
me  —  on  a  yet  larger  pattern.  They  still  grew  and 
grew  in  size.  Within  the  month  my  cigar  had 
grown  to  such  proportions  that  I  could  have  used  it 
as  a  crutch.  It  now  seemed  to  me  that  a  one-cigar 
limit  was  no  real  protection  to  a  person,  so  I 
knocked  my  pledge  on  the  head  and  resumed  my 
liberty. 

To  go  back  to  that  young  Canadian.  He  was  a 
"remittance  man,"  the  first  one  I  had  ever  seen  or 
heard  of.  Passengers  explained  the  term  to  me. 
They  said  that  dissipated  ne'er-do-weels  belonging 
to  important  families  in  England  and  Canada  were 
not  cast  off  by  their  people  while  there  was  any 
hope  of  reforming  them,  but  when  that  last  hope 
perished  at  last,  the  ne'er-do-weel  was  sent  abroad 


Following  the  Equator  25 

to  get  him  out  of  the  way.  He  was  shipped  off  with 
just  enough  money  in  his  pocket — no,  in  the 
purser's  pocket  —  for  the  needs  of  the  voyage  — 
and  when  he  reached  his  destined  port  he  would 
find  a  remittance  awaiting  him  there.  Not  a  large 
one,  but  just  enough  to  keep  him  a  month.  A 
similar  remittance  would  come  monthly  thereafter.  It 
was  the  remittance-man's  custom  to  pay  his  month's 
board  and  lodging  straightway  —  a  duty  which  his 
landlord  did  not  allow  him  to  forget  —  then  spree 
away  the  rest  of  his  money  in  a  single  night,  then 
brood  and  mope  and  grieve  in  idleness  till  the  next 
remittance  came.  It  is  a  pathetic  life. 

We  had  other  remittance-men  on  board,  it  was 
said.  At  least  they  said  they  were  R.  M.'s.  There 
were  two.  But  they  did  not  resemble  the  Canadian; 
they  lacked  his  tidiness,  and  his  brains,  and  his 
gentlemanly  ways,  and  his  resolute  spirit,  and  his 
humanities  and  generosities.  One  of  them  was  a 
lad  of  nineteen  or  twenty,  and  he  was  a  good  deal 
of  a  ruin,  as  to  clothes,  and  morals,  and  general 
aspect.  He  said  he  was  a  scion  of  a  ducal  house 
in  England,  and  had  been  shipped  to  Canada  foi 
the  house's  relief,  that  he  had  fallen  into  trouble 
there,  and  was  now  being  shipped  to  Australia.  He 
said  he  had  no  title.  Beyond  this  remark  he  was 
economical  of  the  truth.  The  first  thing  he  did  in 
Australia  was  to  get  into  the  lockup,  and  the  next 
thing  he  did  was  to  proclaim  himself  an  earl  in  the 
police  court  in  the  morning  and  fail  to  prove  it. 


CHAPTER   II. 

When  in  doubt,  tell  the  truth,  —Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

7TBOUT  four  days  out  from  Victoria  we  plunged 
*»  into  hot  weather,  and  all  the  male  passengers 
put  on  white  linen  clothes.  One  or  two  days  later 
we  crossed  the  25th  parallel  of  north  latitude,  and 
then,  by  order,  the  officers  of  the  ship  laid  away 
their  blue  uniforms  and  came  out  in  white  linen 
ones.  All  the  ladies  were  in  white  by  this  time. 
This  prevalence  of  snowy  costumes  gave  the  prom 
enade  deck  an  invitingly  cool  and  cheerful  and 
picnicky  aspect. 

From  my  diary : 

There  are  several  sorts  of  ills  in  the  world  from 
which  a  person  can  never  escape  altogether,  let  him 
journey  as  far  as  he  will.  One  escapes  from  one 
breed  of  an  ill  only  to  encounter  another  breed  of 
it.  We  have  come  far  from  the  snake  liar  and  the 
fish  liar,  and  there  was  rest  and  peace  in  the 
thought;  but  now  we  have  reached  the  realm  of 
the  boomerang  liar,  and  sorrow  is  with  us  once 
more.  The  first  officer  has  seen  a  man  try  to  escape 
from  his  enemy  by  getting  behind  a  tree ;  but  the 

(26) 


Following  the  Equator  27 

enemy  sent  his  boomerang  sailing  into  the  sky  far 
above  and  beyond  the  tree;  then  it  turned,  de 
scended,  and  killed  the  man.  The  Australian  pas 
senger  has  seen  this  thing  done  to  two  men,  behind 
two  trees  —  and  by  the  one  arrow.  This  being 
received  with  a  large  silence  that  suggested  doubtw 
he  buttressed  it  with  the  statement  that  his  brother 
once  saw  the  boomerang  kill  a  bird  away  off  a  hun 
dred  yards  and  bring  it  to  the  thrower.  But  these  are 
ills  which  must  be  borne.  There  is  no  other  way. 

The  talk  passed  from  the  boomerang  to  dreams  — 
usually  a  fruitful  subject,  afloat  or  ashore  —  but  this 
time  the  output  was  poor.  Then  it  passed  to  in 
stances  of  extraordinary  memory  —  with  better  re 
sults.  Blind  Tom,  the  negro  pianist,  was  spoken 
of,  and  it  was  said  that  he  could  accurately  play  any 
piece  of  music,  howsoever  long  and  difficult,  after 
hearing  it  once ;  and  that  six  months  later  he  could 
accurately  play  it  again,  without  having  touched  it 
in  the  interval.  One  of  the  most  striking  of  the 
stories  told  was  furnished  by  a  gentleman  who  had 
served  on  the  staff  of  the  Viceroy  of  India.  He 
read  the  details  from  his  note-book,  and  explained 
that  he  had  written  them  down,  right  after  the  con 
summation  of  the  incident  which  they  described, 
because  he  thought  that  if  he  did  not  put  them  down 
in  black  and  white  he  might  presently  come  to  think 
he  had  dreamed  them  or  invented  them. 

The  Viceroy  was  making  a  progress,  and  among 
the  shows  offered  by  the  Maharajah  of  Mysore  for 


28  Following  the  Equator 

his  entertainment  was  a  memory-exhibition.  The 
Viceroy  and  thirty  gentlemen  of  his  suite  sat  in  a 
row,  and  the  memory-expert,  a  high-caste  Brahmin, 
was  brought  in  and  seated  on  the  floor  in  front  of 
them.  He  said  he  knew  but  two  languages,  the 
English  and  his  own,  but  would  not  exclude  any 
foreign  tongue  from  the  tests  to  be  applied  to  his 
memory.  Then  he  laid  before  the  assemblage  his 
program  —  a  sufficiently  extraordinary  one.  He 
proposed  that  one  gentleman  should  give  him  one 
word  of  a  foreign  sentence,  and  tell  him  its  place  in 
the  sentence.  He  was  furnished  with  the  French 
word  esty  and  was  told  it  was  second  in  a  sentence 
of  three  words.  The  next  gentleman  gave  him  the 
German  word  verloren  and  said  it  was  the  third  in  a 
sentence  of  four  words.  He  asked  the  next  gentle 
man  for  one  detail  in  a  sum  in  addition ;  another  for 
one  detail  in  a  sum  of  subtraction ;  others  for  single 
details  in  mathematical  problems  of  various  kinds ; 
he  got  them.  Intermediates  gave  him  single  words 
from  sentences  in  Greek,  Latin,  Spanish,  Portuguese, 
Italian,  and  other  languages,  and  told  him  their 
places  in  the  sentences.  When  at  last  everybody 
had  furnished  him  a  single  rag  from  a  foreign 
sentence  or  a  figure  from  a  problem,  he  went  over 
the  ground  again,  and  got  a  second  word  and  a 
second  figure  and  was  told  their  places  in  the  sen 
tences  and  the  sums;  and  so  on  and  so  on.  He 
went  over  the  ground  again  and  again  until  he  had 
collected  all  the  parts  of  the  sums  and  all  the  parts 


Following  the  Equator  29 

of  the  sentences  —  and  all  in  disorder,  of  course, 
not  in  their  proper  rotation.  This  had  occupied 
two  hours. 

The  Brahmin  now  sat  silent  and  thinking,  a  while, 
then  began  and  repeated  all  the  sentences,  placing 
the  words  in  their  proper  order,  and  untangled  the 
disordered  arithmetical  problems  and  gave  accurate 
answers  to  them  all. 

In  the  beginning  he  had  asked  the  company  to 
throw  almonds  at  him  during  the  two  hours,  he  to 
remember  how  many  each  gentleman  had  thrown ; 
but  none  were  thrown,  for  the  Viceroy  said  that  the 
test  would  be  a  sufficiently  severe  strain  without 
adding  that  burden  to  it. 

General  Grant  had  a  fine  memory  for  all  kinds  of 
things,  including  even  names  and.  faces,  and  I  could 
have  furnished  an  instance  of  it  if  I  had  thought  of 
it.  The  first  time  I  ever  saw  him  was  early  in  his 
first  term  as  President.  I  had  just  arrived  in 
Washington  from  the  Pacific  coast,  a  stranger  and 
wholly  unknown  to  the  public,  and  was  passing  the 
White  House  one  morning  when  I  met  a  friend,  a 
Senator  from  Nevada.  He  asked  me  if  I  would 
like  to  see  the  President.  I  said  I  should  be  very 
glad;  so  we  entered.  I  supposed  that  the  President 
would  be  in  the  midst  of  a  crowd,  and  that  I  could 
look  at  him  in  peace  and  security  from  a  distance, 
as  another  stray  cat  might  look  at  another  king. 
But  it  was  in  the  morning,  and  the  Senator  was 
using  a  privilege  of  his  office  which  I  had  not  heard 
3* 


30  Following  the  Equator 

of  —  the  privilege  of  intruding  upon  the  Chief 
Magistrate's  working  hours.  Before  I  knew  it,  the 
Senator  and  I  were  in  the  presence,  and  there  was 
none  there  but  we  three.  General  Grant  got  slowly 
up  from  his  table,  put  his  pen  down,  and  stood 
before  me  with  the  iron  expression  of  a  man  who 
had  not  smiled  for  seven  years,  and  was  not  intend 
ing  to  smile  for  another  seven.  He  looked  me 
steadily  in  the  eyes  —  mine  lost  confidence  and  fell. 
I  had  never  confronted  a  great  man  before,  and  was 
in  a  miserable  state  of  funk  and  inefficiency.  The 
Senator  said : 

"  Mr.  President,  may  I  have  the  privilege  of 
introducing  Mr.  Clemens?" 

The  President  gave  my  hand  an  unsympathetic 
wag  and  dropped.it.  He  did  not  say  a  word,  but 
just  stood.  In  my  trouble  I  could  not  think  of  any 
thing  to  say,  I  merely  wanted  to  resign.  There  was 
an  awkward  pause,  a  dreary  pause,  a  horrible  pause. 
Then  I  thought  of  something,  and  looked  up  into 
that  unyielding  face,  and  said  timidly: 

"Mr.  President,  I  —  I  am  embarrassed.  Are 
you?" 

His  face  broke  —  just  a  little  —  a  wee  glimmer, 
the  momentary  flicker  of  a  summer-lightning  smile, 
seven  years  ahead  of  time  —  and  I  was  out  and  gone 
as  soon  as  it  was. 

Ten  years  passed  away  before  I  saw  him  the 
second  time.  Meantime  I  was  become  better  known ; 
and  was  one  of  the  people  appointed  to  respond  to 


Following  the  Equator  31 

toasts  at  the  banquet  given  to  General  Grant  in  Chi 
cago  by  the  Army  of  the  Tennessee  when  he  came 
back  from  his  tour  around  the  world.  I  arrived 
late  at  night  and  got  up  late  in  the  morning.  All 
the  corridors  of  the  hotel  were  crowded  with  people 
waiting  to  get  a  glimpse  of  General  Grant  when  he 
should  pass  to  the  place  whence  he  was  to  review 
the  great  procession.  I  worked  my  way  by  the 
suite  of  packed  drawing-rooms,  and  at  the  corner  of 
the  house  I  found  a  window  open  where  there  was  a 
roomy  platform  decorated  with  flags,  and  carpeted. 
I  stepped  out  on  it,  and  saw  below  me  millions  oi 
people  blocking  all  the  streets,  and  other  millions 
caked  together  in  all  the  windows  and  on  all  the 
house-tops  around.  These  masses  took  me  for 
General  Grant,  and  broke  into  volcanic  explosions 
and  cheers ;  but  it  was  a  good  place  to  see  the  pro 
cession,  and  I  stayed.  Presently  I  heard  the  distant 
blare  of  military  music,  and  far  up  the  street  I  saw 
the  procession  come  in  sight,  cleaving  its  way 
through  the  huzzaing  multitudes,  with  Sheridan,  the 
most  martial  figure  of  the  War,  riding  at  its  head  in 
the  dress  uniform  of  a  Lieutenant-General. 

And  now  General  Grant,  arm-in-arm  with  Major 
Carter  Harrison,  stepped  out  on  the  platform,  fol 
lowed  two  and  two  by  the  badged  and  uniformed 
reception  committee.  General  Grant  was  looking 
exactly  as  he  had  looked  upon  that  trying  occasion 
of  ten  years  before  —  all  iron  and  bronze  self- 
possession.  Mr.  Harrison  came  over  and  led  me  to 


32  Following  the  Equator 

the  General  and  formally  introduced  me.  Before  I 
could  put  together  the  proper  remark,  General  Grant 
said: 

"  Mr.  Clemens,  I  am  not  embarrassed.  Are 
you?" — and  that  little  seven-year  smile  twinkled 
across  his  face  again. 

Seventeen  years  have  gone  by  since  then,  and 
to-day,  in  New  York,  the  streets  are  a  crush  of  people 
who  are  there  to  honor  the  remains  of  the  great 
soldier  as  they  pass  to  their  final  resting-place  under 
the  monument;  and  the  air  is  heavy  with  dirges  and 
the  boom  of  artillery,  and  all  the  millions  of  America 
are  thinking  of  the  man  who  restored  the  Union  and 
the  flag,  and  gave  to  democratic  government  a  new 
lease  of  life,  and,  as  we  may  hope  and  do  believe,  a 
permanent  place  among  the  beneficent  institutions 
of  men. 

We  had  one  game  in  the  ship  which  was  a  good 
time-passer  —  at  least  it  was  at  night  in  the  smoking- 
room  when  the  men  were  getting  freshened  up  from 
the  day's  monotonies  and  dullnesses.  It  was  the 
completing  of  non-complete  stories.  That  is  to  say, 
a  man  would  tell  all  of  a  story  except  the  finish, 
then  the  others  would  try  to  supply  the  ending  out 
of  their  own  invention.  When  every  one  who 
wanted  a  chance  had  had  it,  the  man  who  had  intro 
duced  the  story  would  give  it  its  original  ending  — 
then  you  could  take  your  choice.  Sometimes  the 
new  endings  turned  out  to  be  better  than  the  old 
one.  But  the  story  which  called  out  the  most  per- 


Following  the  Equator  33 

sistent  and  determined  and  ambitious  effort  was  one 
which  had  no  ending,  and  so  there  was  nothing  to 
compare  the  new-made  endings  with.  The  man 
who  told  it  said  he  could  furnish  the  particulars  up 
to  a  certain  point  only,  because  that  was  as  much  of 
the  tale  as  he  knew.  He  had  read  it  in  a  volume  of 
sketches  twenty-five  years  ago,  and  was  interrupted 
before  the  end  was  reached.  He  would  give  any 
one  fifty  dollars  who  would  finish  the  story  to  the 
satisfaction  of  a  jury  to  be  appointed  by  ourselves. 
We  appointed  a  jury  and  wrestled  with  the  tale. 
We  invented  plenty  of  endings,  but  the  jury  voted 
them  all  down.  The  jury  was  right.  It  was  a  tale 
which  the  author  of  it  may  possibly  have  completed 
satisfactorily,  and  if  he  really  had  that  good  fortune 
I  would  like  to  know  what  the  ending  was.  Any 
ordinary  man  will  find  that  the  story's  strength 
is  in  its  middle,  and  that  there  is  apparently  no 
way  to  transfer  it  to  the  close,  where  of  course 
it  ought  to  be.  In  substance  the  storiette  was  as 
follows : 

John  Brown,  aged  thirty-one,  good,  gentle,  bashful,  timid,  lived  in 
a  quiet  village  in  Missouri.  He  was  superintendent  of  the  Presbyterian 
Sunday-school.  It  was  but  a  humble  distinction;  still,  it  was  his  only 
official  one,  and  he  was  modestly  proud  of  it  and  was  devoted  to  its 
work  and  its  interests.  The  extreme  kindliness  of  his  nature  was 
recognized  by  all;  in  fact,  people  said  that  he  was  made  entirely  out  bf 
good  impulses  and  bashfulness;  that  he  could  always  be  counted  upon 
for  help  when  it  was  needed,  and  for  bashfulness  both  when  it  was 
needed  and  when  it  wasn't. 

Mary  Taylor,  twenty-three,  modest,  sweet,  winning,  and  in  charactel 
3* 


34  Following  the  Equator 

and  person  beautiful,  was  all  in  all  to  him.  And  he  was  very  nearly 
all  in  all  to  her.  She  was  wavering,  his  hopes  were  high.  Her 
mother  had  been  in  opposition  from  the  first.  But  she  was  wavering, 
too;  he  could  see  it.  She  was  being  touched  by  his  warm  interest 
in  her  two  charity  proteges  and  by  his  contributions  toward  their 
support.  These  were  two  forlorn  and  aged  sisters  who  lived  in  a 
log  hut  in  a  lonely  place  up  a  cross-road  four  miles  from  Mrs.  Taylor's 
farm.  One  of  the  sisters  was  crazy,  and  sometimes  a  little  violent,  but 
not  often. 

At  last  the  time  seemed  ripe  for  a  final  advance,  and  Brown  gathered 
his  courage  together  and  resolved  to  make  it.  He  would  take  along  a 
contribution  of  double  the  usual  size,  and  win  the  mother  over;  with 
her  opposition  annulled,  the  rest  of  the  conquest  would  be  sure  and 
prompt. 

He  took  to  the  road  in  the  middle  of  a  placid  Sunday  afternoon  in 
the  soft  Missourian  summer,  and  he  was  equipped  properly  for  his 
mission.  He  was  clothed  all  in  white  linen,  with  a  blue  ribbon  for  a 
necktie,  and  he  had  on  dressy  tight  boots.  His  horse  and  buggy  were 
the  finest  that  the  livery  stable  could  furnish.  The  lap  robe  was  of 
white  linen,  it  was  new,  and  it  had  a  hand-worked  border  that  could 
not  be  rivaled  in  that  region  for  beauty  and  elaboration. 

When  he  was  four  miles  out  on  the  lonely  road  and  was  walking  his 
horse  over  a  wooden  bridge,  his  straw  hat  blew  off  and  fell  in  the 
creek,  and  floated  down  and  lodged  against  a  bar.  He  did  not  quite 
know  what  to  do.  He  must  have  the  hat,  that  was  manifest;  but  how 
was  he  to  get  it  ? 

Then  he  had  an  idea.  The  roads  were  empty,  nobody  was  stirring. 
Yes,  he  would  risk  it.  He  led  the  horse  to  the  roadside  and  set  it  to 
cropping  the  grass;  then  he  undressed  and  put  his  clothes  in  the  buggy, 
petted  the  horse  a  moment  to  secure  its  compassion  and  its  loyalty,  then 
hurried  to  the  stream.  He  swam  out  and  soon  had  the  hat.  When  he 
got  to  the  top  of  the  bank  the  horse  was  gone ! 

His  legs  almost  gave  way  under  him.  The  horse  was  walking 
leisurely  along  the  road.  Brown  trotted  after  it,  saying,  "  Whoa,  whoa, 
there's  a  good  fellow;"  but  whenever  he  got  near  enough  to  chance  a 
jump  for  the  buggy,  the  horse  quickened  its  pace  r,  little  and  defeated 
him.  And  so  this  went  on,  the  naked  man  perishing  with  anxiety,  and 
expecting  every  moment  to  see  people  come  in  sight.  He  tagged  on 
and  on,  imploring  the  horse,  beseeching  the  horse,  till  he  had  left  a 


Following  the  Equator  35 

mile  behind  him,  and  was  closing  up  on  the  Taylor  premises;  then  at 
last  he  was  successful,  and  got  into  the  buggy.  He  flung  on  his  shirt, 
his  necktie,  and  his  coat;  then  reached  for  —  but  he  was  too  late;  he 
sat  suddenly  down  and  pulled  up  the  lap-robe,  for  he  saw  some  one 
coming  out  of  the  gate  —  a  woman,  he  thought.  He  wheeled  the 
horse  to  the  left,  and  struck  briskly  up  the  cross-road.  It  was  perfectly 
straight,  and  exposed  on  both  sides;  but  there  were  woods  and  a  sharp 
turn  three  miles  ahead,  and  he  was  very  grateful  when  he  got  there. 
As  he  passed  around  the  turn  he  slowed  down  to  a  walk,  and  reached 
for  his  tr  —  too  late  again. 

He  had  come  upon  Mrs.  Enderby,  Mrs.  Glossop,  Mrs.  Taylor, 
and  Mary.  They  were  on  foot,  and  seemed  tired  and  excited. 
They  came  at  once  to  the  buggy  and  shook  hands,  and  all  spoke 
at  once,  and  said,  eagerly  and  earnestly,  how  glad  they  were  that 
he  was  come,  and  how  fortunate  it  was.  And  Mrs.  Enderby  said, 
impressively : 

"It  looks  like  an  accident,  his  coming  at  such  a  time;  but  let 
no  one  profane  it  with  such  a  name;  he  was  sent  —  sent  from  on 
high." 

They  were  all  moved,  and  Mrs.  Glossop  said  in  an  awed  voice: 

"  Sarah  Enderby,  you  never  said  a  truer  word  in  your  life.  This 
is  no  accident,  it  is  a  special  Providence.  He  was  sent.  He  is  an 
angel  —  an  angel  as  truly  as  ever  angel  was  —  an  angel  of  deliver 
ance.  /  say  angel,  Sarah  Enderby,  and  will  have  no  other  word. 
Don't  let  any  one  ever  say  to  me  again,  that  there's  no  such  thing 
as  special  Providences;  for  if  this  isn't  one,  let  them  account  for  it 
that  can." 

"I  know  it's  so,"  said  Mrs.  Taylor,  fervently.  "John  Brown,  I 
could  worship  you;  I  could  go  down  on  my  knees  to  you.  Didn't 
something  tell  you?  —  didn't  you  feel  that  you  were  sent?  I  could  kiss 
the  hem  of  your  lap-robe." 

He  was  not  able  to  speak;  he  was  helpless  with  shame  and  fright. 
Mrs.  Taylor  went  on : 

"  Why,  just  look  at  it  all  around,  Julia  Glossop.  Any  person  can 
see  the  hand  of  Providence  in  it.  Here  at  noon  what  do  we  see?  We 
see  the  smoke  rising.  I  speak  up  and  say,  '  That's  the  Old  People's 
cabin  afire.'  Didn't  I,  Julia  Glossop?" 

"The   very   words   you   said,    Nancy   Taylor.     I  was   as  close  to 


36  Following  the  Equator 

you  as  I  am  now,  and  I  heard  them.  You  may  have  said  hut  instead 
of  cabin,  but  in  substance  it's  the  same.  And  you  were  looking 
pale,  too." 

"Pale?  I  was  that  pale  that  if  —  why,  you  just  compare  it  with 
this  lap-robe.  Then  the  next  thing  I  said  was,  *  Mary  Taylcr,  tell  the 
hired  man  to  rig  up  the  team  —  we'll  go  to  the  rescue.'  And  she  said, 
'  Mother,  don't  you  know  you  told  him  he  could  drive  to  see  his  people, 
and  stay  over  Sunday  ?  '  And  it  was  just  so.  I  declare  for  it,  I  had 
forgotten  it.  'Then,'  said  I,  'we'll  go  afoot.'  And  go  we  did.  And 
found  Sarah  Enderby  on  the  road." 

"  And  we  all  went  together,"  said  Mrs.  Enderby.  "  And  found  the 
cabin  set  fire  to  and  burnt  down  by  the  crazy  one,  and  the  poor  old 
things  so  old  and  feeble  that  they  couldn't  go  afoot.  And  we  got  them 
to  a  shady  place  and  made  them  as  comfortable  as  we  could,  and  began 
to  wonder  which  way  to  turn  to  find  some  way  to  get  them  conveyed  to 
Nancy  Taylor's  house.  And  I  spoke  up  and  said  —  now  what  did  I 
say?  Didn't  I  say,  '  Providence  will  provide  '  ?  " 

"  Why  sure  as  you  live,  so  you  did  !     I  had  forgotten  it." 

"So  had  I,"  said  Mrs.  Glossop  and  Mrs.  Taylor;  "but  you  cer 
tainly  saidii.  Now  wasn't  that  remarkable?  " 

"  Yes,  I  said  it.  And  then  we  went  to  Mr.  Moseley's,  two  miles, 
and  all  of  them  were  gone  to  the  camp-meeting  over  on  Stony  Fork; 
and  then  we  came  all  the  way  back,  two  miles,  and  then  here,  another 
mile  —  and  Providence  has  provided.  You  see  it  yourselves." 

They  gazed  at  each  other  awe-struck,  and  lifted  their  hands  and 
said  in  unison : 

"  It's  per-fectly  wonderful." 

"And  then,"  said  Mrs.  Glossop,  "what  do  you  think  we  had 
better  do  —  let  Mr.  Brown  drive  the  Old  People  to  Nancy  Taylor's  one 
at  a  time,  or  put  both  of  them  in  the  buggy,  and  him  lead  the  horse  ?  ' ' 

Brown  gasped. 

"Now,  then,  that's  a  question,"  said  Mrs.  Enderby.  "You  see, 
we  are  all  tired  out,  and  any  way  we  fix  it  it's  going  to  be  difficult. 
For  if  Mr.  Brown  takes  both  of  them,  at  least  one  of  us  must  go  back 
to  help  him,  for  he  can't  load  them  into  the  buggy  by  himself,  and  they 
so  helpless." 

"That  is  so,"  said  Mrs.  Taylor.  "It  doesn't  look  —  oh,  how 
would  this  do !  —  one  of  us  drive  there  with  Mr.  Brown,  and  the 
rest  of  you  go  along  to  my  house  and  get  things  ready.  I'll  go  with 


Following  the  Equator  37 

him.  He  and  I  together  can  lift  one  of  the  Old  People  into  the 
buggy;  then  drive  her  to  my  house  and  — 

"But  who  will  take  care  of  the  other  one?"  said  Mrs.  Enderby. 
"  We  musn't  leave  her  there  in  the  woods  alone,  you  know  —  especially 
the  crazy  one.  There  and  back  is  eight  miles,  you  see." 

They  had  all  been  sitting  on  the  grass  beside  the  buggy  for  a  while, 
now,  trying  to  rest  their  weary  bodies.  They  fell  silent  a  moment  or 
two,  and  struggled  in  thought  over  the  baffling  situation;  then  Mrs. 
Enderby  brightened  and  said: 

"I  think  I've  got  the  idea,  now.  You  see,  we  can't  walk  any 
more.  Think  what  we've  done;  four  miles  there,  two  to  Moseley's, 
is  six,  then  back  to  here  —  nine  miles  since  noon,  and  not  a  bite  to 
eat:  I  declare  I  don't  see  how  we've  done  it;  and  as  for  me,  I  am 
just  famishing.  Now,  somebody's  got  to  go  back,  to  help  Mr. 
Brown  —  there's  no  getting  around  that;  but  whoever  goes  has  got 
to  ride,  not  walk.  So  my  idea  is  this:  one  of  us  to  ride  back 
with  Mr.  Brown,  then  ride  to  Nancy  Taylor's  house  with  one  of  the 
Old  People,  leaving  Mr.  Brown  to  keep  the  other  old  one  company, 
you  all  to  go  now  to  Nancy's  and  rest  and  wait;  then  one  of  you 
drive  back  and  get  the  other  one  and  drive  her  to  Nancy's,  and 
Mr.  Brown  walk." 

"  Splendid !  "  they  all  cried.  "  Oh,  that  will  do  —  that  will  answer 
perfectly."  And  they  all  said  that  Mrs.  Enderby  had  the  best  head  for 
planning  in  the  company;  and  they  said  that  they  wondered  that  they 
hadn't  thought  of  this  simple  plan  themselves.  They  hadn't  meant  to 
take  back  the  compliment,  good  simple  souls,  and  didn't  know  they  had 
done  it.  After  a  consultation  it  was  decided  that  Mrs.  Enderby  should 
drive  back  with  Brown,  she  being  entitled  to  the  distinction  because  she 
had  invented  the  plan.  Everything  now  being  satisfactorily  arranged 
and  settled,  the  ladies  rose,  relieved  and  happy,  and  brushed  down 
their  gowns,  and  three  of  them  started  homeward;  Mrs.  Enderby  set 
her  foot  on  the  buggy  sv^p  and  was  about  to  climb  in,  when  Brown 
found  a  remnant  of  his  voice  and  gasped  out  — 

<c  Please  Mrs.  Enderby,  call  them  back  —  I  am  very  weak;  I  can't 
walk,  I  can't  indeed." 

"Why,  dear  Mr.  Brown  !  You  do  look  pale;  I  am  ashamed  of 
myself  that  I  didn't  notice  it  sooner.  Come  back  —  all  of  you!  Mr. 
Brown  is  not  well.  Is  there  anything  I  can  do  for  you,  Mr.  Brown?  — 
I'm  real  sorry.  Are  you  in  pain?  " 


38  Following  the  Equator 

"No,  madam,  only  weak;  I  am  not  sick,  but  only  just  weak—, 
lately;  not  long,  but  just  lately." 

The  others  came  back,  and  poured  out  their  sympathies  and  com 
miserations,  and  were  full  of  self-reproaches  for  not  having  noticed  how 
pale  he  was.  And  they  at  once  struck  out  a  new  plan,  aud  soon  agreed 
that  it  was  by  far  the  best  of  all.  They  would  all  go  to  Nancy  Taylor's 
house  and  see  to  Brown's  needs  first.  He  could  lie  on  the  sofa  in  the 
parlor,  and  while  Mrs.  Taylor  and  Mary  took  care  of  him  the  other  two 
ladies  would  take  the  buggy  and  go  and  get  one  of  the  Old  People,  and 
leave  one  of  themselves  with  the  other  one,  and  — 

By  this  time,  without  any  solicitation,  they  were  at  the  horse's 
head  and  were  beginning  to  turn  him  around.  The  danger  was 
imminent,  but  Brown  found  his  voice  again  and  saved  himself.  He 
said  — 

"  But  ladies,  you  are  overlooking  something  which  makes  the  plan 
impracticable.  You  see,  if  you  bring  one  of  them  home,  and  one 
remains  behind  with  the  other,  there  will  be  three  persons  there  when 
one  of  you  comes  back  for  that  other,  for  some  one  must  drive  the 
buggy  back,  and  three  can't  come  home  in  it." 

They  all  exclaimed,  "Why,  sure-ly,  that  is  so!"  and  they  were  all 
perplexed  again. 

"  Dear,  dear,  what  can  we  do?  "  said  Mrs.  Glossop;  "  it  is  the  most 
mixed-up  thing  that  ever  was.  The  fox  and  the  goose  and  the  corn  and 
things  —  oh,  dear,  they  are  nothing  to  it." 

They  sat  wearily  down  once  more,  to  further  torture  their  tormented 
heads  for  a  plan  that  would  work.  Presently  Mary  offered  a  plan;  it 
was  her  first  effort.  She  said: 

"  I  am  young  and  strong,  and  am  refreshed,  now.  Take  Mr.  Brown 
to  our  house,  and  give  him  help  —  you  see  how  plainly  he  needs  it.  I 
will  go  back  and  take  care  of  the  Old  People;  I  can  be  there  in  twenty 
minutes.  You  can  go  on  and  do  what  you  first  started  to  do  —  wait  on 
the  main  road  at  our  house  until  somebody  comes  along  with  a  wagon; 
then  send  and  bring  away  the  three  of  us.  You  won't  have  to  wait 
long;  the  farmers  will  soon  be  coming  back  from  town  now.  I  will 
keep  old  Polly  patient  and  cheered  up  —  the  crazy  one  doesn't 
need  it." 

This  plan  was  discussed  and  accepted;  it  seemed  the  best  that  could 
be  done,  in  the  circumstances,  and  the  Old  People  must  be  getting  do* 
couraged  by  this  time. 


Following  the  Equator  39 

Brown  felt  relieved,  and  was  deeply  thankful.  Let  him  once  get  to 
the  main  road  and  he  would  find  a  way  to  escape. 

Then  Mrs.  Taylor  said: 

"The  evening  chill  will  be  coming  on,  pretty  soon,  and  those  poor 
old  burnt-out  things  will  need  some  kind  of  covering.  Take  the  lap- 
robe  with  you,  dear." 

"Very  well,  Mother,  I  will."  . 

She  stepped  to  the  buggy  and  put  out  her  hand  to  take  it  — 

That  was  the  end  of  the  tale.  The  passenger  who  told  it  said  that 
when  he  read  the  story  twenty-five  years  ago  in  a  train  he  was  inter 
rupted  at  that  point  —  the  train  jumped  off  a  bridge. 

At  first  we  thought  we  could  finish  the  story  quite  easily,  and  we  set 
to  work  with  confidence;  but  it  soon  began  to  appear  that  it  was  not  a 
simple  thing,  but  difficult  and  baffling.  This  was  on  account  of  Brown's 
character  —  great  generosity  and  kindliness,  but  complicated  with 
unusual  shyness  and  diffidence,  particularly  in  the  presence  of  ladies. 
There  was  his  love  for  Mary,  in  a  hopeful  state  but  not  yet  secure  — 
just  in  a  condition,  indeed,  where  its  affair  must  be  handled  with  great 
tact,  and  no  mistakes  made,  no  offense  given.  And  there  were  the 
mother  —  wavering,  half  willing  —  by  adroit  and  flawless  diplomacy  to 
be  won  over,  now,  or  perhaps  never  at  all.  Also,  there  was  the  helpless 
Old  People  yonder  in  the  woods  waiting  —  their  fate  and  Brown's  hap 
piness  to  be  determined  by  what  Brown  should  do  within  the  next  two 
seconds.  Mary  was  reaching  for  the  lap-robe;  Brown  must  decide  — 
there  was  no  time  to  be  lost. 

Of  course  none  but  a  happy  ending  of  the  story  would  be  accepted 
by  the  jury;  the  finish  must  find  Brown  in  high  credit  with  the  ladies, 
his  behavior  without  blemish,  his  modesty  unwounded,  his  character  for 
self-sacrifice  maintained,  the  Old  People  rescued  through  him,  their  ben 
efactor,  all  the  party  proud  of  him,  happy  in  him,  his  praises  on  all  their 
tongues. 

We  tried  to  arrange  this,  but  it  was  beset  with  persistent  and  irrecon 
cilable  difficulties.  We  saw  that  Brown's  shyness  would  not  allow  him 
to  give  up  the  lap-robe.  This  would  offend  Mary  and  her  mother;  and 
it  would  surprise  the  other  ladies,  partly  because  this  stinginess  toward 
the  suffering  Old  People  would  be  out  of  character  with  Brown,  and 
partly  because  he  was  a  special  Providence  and  could  not  properly  act 
so.  If  asked  to  explain  his  conduct,  his  shyness  would  not  allow  him 
to  tell  the  truth,  and  lack  of  invention  and  practice  would  find  him 


40  Following  the  Equator 

incapable  of   contriving   a  lie  that  would  wash.     We  worked   at   the 
troublesome  problem  until  three  in  the  morning. 

Meantime  Mary  was  still  reaching  for  the  lap-robe.  We  gave  it  up, 
and  decided  to  let  her  continue  to  reach.  It  is  the  reader's  privilege  to 
determine  for  himself  how  the  thing  came  out. 


CHAPTER  III. 

It  is  more  trouble  to  make  a  maxim  than  it  is  to  do  right. 

— PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

ON  the  seventh  day  out  we  saw  a  dim  vast  bulk 
standing  up  out  of  the  wastes  of  the  Pacific 
and  knew  that  that  spectral  promontory  was  Diamond 
Head,  a  piece  of  this  world  which  I  had  not  seen 
before  for  twenty-nine  years.  So  we  were  nearing 
Honolulu,  the  capital  city  of  the  Sandwich  Islands 
—  those  islands  which  to  me  were  Paradise ;  a  Para 
dise  which  I  had  been  longing  all  those  years  to  see 
again.  Not  any  other  thing  in  the  world  could  have 
stirred  me  as  the  sight  of  that  great  reck  did. 

In  the  night  we  anchored  a  mile  from  shore. 
Through  my  port  I  could  see  the  twinkling  lights  of 
Honolulu  and  the  dark  bulk  of  the  mountain-range 
that  stretched  away  right  and  left.  I  could  not 
make  out  the  beautiful  Nuuana  valley,  but  I  knew 
where  it  lay,  and  remembered  how  it  used  to  look  in 
the  old  times.  We  used  to  ride  up  it  on  horseback 
in  those  days  —  we  young  people  —  and  branch  off 
and  gather  bones  in  a  sandy  region  where  one  of 
the  first  Kamehameha's  battles  was  fought.  He  was 
a  remarkable  man,  for  a  king;  and  he  was  also  a 

(41) 


42 


Following  the  Equator 


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i_4    nf     «±C 

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FACSIMILE   PAGE   FROM   THE  AUTHOR'S   NOTE  BOOK. 


Following  the  Equator  43 

remarkable  man  foi  a  savage.  He  was  a  mere 
kinglet  and  of  little  or  no  consequence  at  the  time 
of  Captain  Ccok's  arrival  in  1788;  but  about  four 
years  afterward  he  conceived  the  idea  of  enlarging 
his  sphere  of  influence.  That  is  a  courteous  modern 
phrase  which  means  robbing  your  neighbor  —  for 
your  neighbor's  benefit;  and  the  great  theater  of  its 
benevolences  is  Africa.  Kamehameha  went  to  war, 
and  in  the  course  of  ten  years  he  whipped  out  all  the 
other  kings  and  made  himself  master  of  every  one 
of  the  nine  or  ten  islands  that  form  the  group.  But 
he  did  more  than  that.  He  bought  ships,  freighted 
them  with  sandal  wood  and  other  native  products, 
and  sent  them  as  far  as  South  America  and  China; 
he  sold  to  his  savages  the  foreign  stuffs  and  tools 
and  utensils  which  came  back  in  these  ships,  and 
started  the  march  of  civilization.  It  is  doubtful  if 
the  match  to  this  extraordinary  thing  is  to  be  found 
in  the  history  of  any  other  savage.  Savages  are 
eager  to  learn  from  the  white  man  any  new  way  to 
kill  each  other,  but  it  is  not  their  habit  to  seize 
with  avidity  and  apply  with  energy  the  larger  and 
nobler  ideas  which  he  offers  them.  The  details  of 
Kamehameha' s  history  show  that  he  was  always 
hospitably  ready  to  examine  the  white  man's  ideas, 
and  that  he  exercised  a  tidy  discrimination  in  making 
his  selections  from  the  samples  placed  on  view. 

A  shrewder  discrimination  than  was  exhibited  by 
his  son  and  successor,  Liholiho,  I  think.  Liholiho 
could  have  qualified  as  a  reformer,  perhaps,  but  as 


-' 

44  Following  the  Equator 

a  king  he  was  a  mistake.  A  mistake  because  he 
tried  to  be  both  king  and  reformer.  This  is  mixing 
fire  and  gunpowder  together.  A  king  has  no  proper 
business  with  reforming.  His  best  policy  is  to  keep 
things  as  they  are;  and  if  he  can't  do  that,  he  ought 
to  try  to  make  them  worse  than  they  are.  This  is 
not  guesswork;  I  have  thought  over  this  matter  a 
good  deal,  so  that  if  I  should  ever  have  a  chance  to 
become  a  king  I  would  know  how  to  conduct  the 
business  in  the  best  way. 

When  Liholiho  succeeded  his  father  he  found 
himself  possessed  of  an  equipment  of  royal  tools  and 
safeguards  which  a  wiser  king  would  have  known 
how  to  husband,  and  judiciously  employ,  and  make 
profitable.  The  entire  country  was  under  the  one 
scepter,  and  his  was  that  scepter.  There  was  an 
Established  Church,  and  he  was  the  head  of  it. 
There  was  a  Standing  Army,  and  he  was  the  head  of 
that;  an  Army  of  114  privates  under  command  of 
27  Generals  and  a  Field  Marshal.  There  was  a 
proud  and  ancient  Hereditary  Nobility.  There  was 
still  one  other  asset.  This  was  the  tabu  —  an  agent 
endowed  with  a  mysterious  and  stupendous  power, 
an  agent  not  found  among  the  properties  of  any 
European  monarch,  a  tool  of  inestimable  value  in 
the  business.  Liholiho  was  headmaster  of  the  tabu 
The  tabu  was  the  most  ingenious  and  effective  of 
all  the  inventions  that  has  ever  been  devised  for 
keeping  a  people's  privileges  satisfactorily  restricted. 

It  required  the  sexes  to  live  in  separate  houses 


Following  the  Equator  45 

It  did  not  allow  people  to  eat  in  either  house ;  they 
must  eat  in  another  place.  It  did  net  allow  a  man's 
woman-folk  to  enter  his  house.  It  did  not  allow  the 
sexes  to  eat  together ;  the  men  must  eat  first,  and 
the  women  must  wait  on  them.  Then  the  women 
could  eat  what  was  left — if  anything  was  left —  and 
wait  on  themselves.  I  mean,  if  anything  of  a  coarse 
or  unpalatable  sort  was  left,  the  women  could  have 
it.  But  not  the  good  things,  the  fine  things,  the 
choice  things,  such  as  pork,  poultry,  bananas,  cocoa- 
nuts,  the  choicer  varieties  of  fish,  and  so  on.  By 
the  tabu,  all  these  were  sacred  to  the  men;  the 
women  spent  their  lives  longing  for  them  and  won 
dering  what  they  might  taste  like;  and  they  died 
without  finding  out. 

These  rules,  as  you  see,  were  quite  simple  and 
clear.  It  was  easy  to  remember  them ;  and  useful. 
For  the  penalty  for  infringing  any  rule  in  the  whole 
list  was  deatJi.  Those  women  easily  learned  to  put 
up  with  shark  and  taro  and  dog  for  a  diet  when 
the  other  things  were  so  expensive. 

It  was  death  for  any  one  to  walk  upon  tabu'd 
ground;  or  defile  a  tabu'd  thing  with  his  touch;  or 
fail  in  due  servility  to  a  chief;  or  step  upon  the 
king's  shadow.  The  nobles  and  the  King  and  the 
priests  were  always  suspending  little  rags  here  and 
there  and  yonder,  to  give  notice  to  the  people  that 
the  decorated  spot  or  thing  was  tabu,  and  death 
lurking  near.  The  struggle  for  life  was  difficult  and 
chancy  in  the  islands  in  those  days. 


46  Following  the  Equator 

Thus  advantageously  was  the  new  king  situated. 
Will  it  be  believed  that  the  first  thing  he  did  was  to 
destroy  his  Established  Church,  root  and  branch? 
He  did  indeed  do  that.  To  state  the  case  figura 
tively,  he  was  a  prosperous  sailor  who  burnt  his  ship 
and  took  to  a  raft.  This  Church  was  a  horrid 
thing.  It  heavily  oppressed  the  people ;  it  kept 
them  always  trembling  in  the  gloom  of  mysterious 
threatenings ;  it  slaughtered  them  in  sacrifice  before 
its  grotesque  idols  of  wood  and  stone ;  it  cowed 
them,  it  terrorized  them,  it  made  them  slaves  to  its 
priests,  and  through  the  priests  to  the  king.  It  was 
the  best  friend  a  king  could  have,  and  the  most  de 
pendable.  To  a  professional  reformer  who  should 
annihilate  so  frightful  and  so  devastating  a  power  as 
this  Church,  reverence  and  praise  would  be  due; 
but  to  a  king  who  should  do  it,  could  properly  be 
due  nothing  but  reproach ;  reproach  softened  by 
sorrow;  sorrow  for  his  unfitness  for  his  position. 

He  destroyed  his  Established  Church,  and  his 
kingdom  is  a  republic  to-day,  in  consequence  of 
that  act. 

When  he  destroyed  the  Church  and  burned  the 
idols  he  did  a  mighty  thing  for  civilization  and  for 
his  people's  weal  —  but  it  was  not  "  business."  It 
was  unkingly,  it  was  inartistic.  It  made  trouble  for 
his  line.  The  American  missionaries  arrived  while 
the  burned  idols  were  still  smoking.  They  found 
the  nation  without  a  religion,  and  they  repaired  the 
defect.  They  offered  their  own  religion  and  it  was 


Following  the  Equator  47 

gladly  received.  But  it  was  no  support  to  arbitrary 
kingship,  and  so  the  kingly  power  began  to  weaken 
from  that  day.  Forty-seven  years  later,  when  I 
was  in  the  islands,  Kamehameha  V.  was  trying  to 
repair  Liholiho's  blunder,  and  not  succeeding.  He 
had  set  up  an  Established  Church  and  made  himself 
the  head  of  it.  But  it  was  only  a  pinchbeck  thing, 
an  imitation,  a  bauble,  an  empty  show.  It  had  no 
power,  no  value  for  a  king.  It  could  not  harry  or 
burn  or  slay,  it  in  no  way  resembled  the  admirable 
machine  which  Liholiho  destroyed.  It  was  an 
Established  Church  without  an  Establishment;  all 
the  people  were  Dissenters 

Long  before  that,  the  kingship  had  itself  become 
but  a  name,  a  show.  At  an  early  day  the  mission 
aries  had  turned  it  into  something  very  much  like  a 
republic ;  and  here  lately  the  business  whites  have 
turned  it  into  something  exactly  like  it. 

In  Captain  Cook's  time  (1778),  the  native  popula 
tion  of  the  islands  was  estimated  at  400,000 ;  in 
1836  at  something  short  of  200,000;  in  1866  at 
50,000;  it  is  to-day,  per  census,  25,000.  All  in 
telligent  people  praise  Kamehameha  I.  and  Liholiho 
for  conferring  upon  the  people  the  great  boon  of 
civilization.  I  would  do  it  myself,  but  my  intelli 
gence  is  out  of  repair,  now,  from  overwork. 

When  I  was  in  the  islands  nearly  a  generation  ago, 
I  was  acquainted  with  a  young  American  couple  who 
had  among  their  belongings  an  attractive  little  son  of 
the  age  of  seven  —  attractive  but  not  practicably  com- 


48  Following  the  Equator 

panionable  with  me,  because  he  knew  no  English. 
He  had  played  from  his  birth  with  the  little  Kanakas 
on  his  father's  plantation,  and  had  preferred  their 
language  and  would  learn  no  other.  The  family  re 
moved  to  America  a  month  after  I  arrived  in  the 
islands,  and  straightway  the  boy  began  to  lose  his 
Kanaka  and  pick  up  English.  By  the  time  he  was 
twelve  he  hadn't  a  word  of  Kanaka  left;  the  language 
had  wholly  departed  from  his  tongue  and  from  his 
comprehension.  Nine  years  later,  when  he  was 
twenty-one,  I  came  upon  the  family  in  one  of  the 
lake  towns  of  New  York,  and  the  mother  told  me 
about  an  adventure  which  her  son  had  been  having. 
By  trade  he  was  now  a  professional  diver.  A 
passenger  boat  had  been  caught  in  a  storm  on  the 
lake,  and  had  gone  down,  carrying  her  people  with 
her.  A  few  days  later  the  young  diver  descended, 
with  his  armor  on,  and  entered  the  berth-saloon  of 
the  boat,  and  stood  at  the  foot  of  the  companion- 
way,  with  his  hand  on  the  rail,  peering  through  the 
dim  water.  Presently  something  touched  him  on 
the  shoulder,  and  he  turned  and  found  a  dead  man 
swaying  and  bobbing  about  him  and  seemingly  in 
specting  him  inquiringly.  He  was  paralyzed  with 
fright.  His  entry  had  disturbed  the  water,  and  now 
lie  discerned  a  number  of  dim  corpses  making  for 
him  and  wagging  their  heads  and  swaying  their 
bodies  like  sleepy  people  trying  to  dance.  His 
senses  forsook  him,  and  in  that  condition  he  was 
drawn  to  the  surface.  He  was  put  to  bed  at  home, 


Following  the  Equator  49 

and  was  soon  very  ill.  During  some  days  he  had 
seasons  of  delirium  which  lasted  several  hours  at  a 
time;  and  while  they  lasted  he  talked  Kanaka  in 
cessantly  and  glibly;  and  Kanaka  only.  He  was 
still  very  ill,  and  he  talked  to  me  in  that  tongue; 
but  I  did  not  understand  it,  of  course.  The  doctor- 
books  tell  us  that  cases  like  this  are  not  uncommon. 
Then  the  doctors  ought  to  study  the  cases  and  find 
out  how  to  multiply  them.  Many  languages  and 
things  get  mislaid  in  a  person's  head,  and  stay  mis 
laid  for  lack  of  this  remedy. 

Many  memories  of  my  former  visit  to  the  islands 
came  up  in  my  mind  while  we  lay  at  anchor  in  front 
of  Honolulu  that  night.  And  pictures  —  pictures 
—  pictures  —  an  enchanting  procession  of  them  ! 
I  was  impatient  for  the  morning  to  come. 

When  it  came  it  brought  disappointment,  of 
course.  Cholera  had  broken  out  in  the  town,  and 
we  were  not  allowed  to  have  any  communication 
with  the  shore.  Thus  suddenly  did  my  dream  of 
twenty-nine  years  go  to  ruin.  Messages  came  from 
friends,  but  the  friends  themselves  I  was  not  to  have 
any  sight  of.  My  lecture-hall  was  ready,  but  I  was 
not  to  see  that,  either. 

Several  of  our  passengers  belonged  in  Honolulu, 
and  these  were  sent  ashore;  but  nobody  could  go 
ashore  and  return.  There  were  peop1^  on  shore 
who  were  booked  to  go  with  us  to  Australia,  but  we 
could  not  receive  them;  to  do  it  would  cost  us  a 
quarantine-term  in  Sydney.  They  could  have 


f  A 

50  Following  the  Equator 

escaped  the  day  before,  by  ship  to  San  Francisco ; 
but  the  bars  had  been  put  up,  now,  and  they  might 
have  to  wait  weeks  before  any  ship  could  venture  to 
give  them  a  passage  any  whither.  And  there  were 
hardships  for  others.  An  elderly  lady  and  her  son, 
recreation  seekers  from  Massachusetts,  had  wandered 
Westward,  further  and  further  from  home,  always 
intending  to  take  the  return  track,  but  always  con 
cluding  to  go  still  a  little  further ;  and  now  here  they 
Were  at  anchor  before  Honolulu  —  positively  their 
last  westward-bound  indulgence  —  they  had  made  up 
!  their  minds  to  that  —  but  where  is  the  use  of  making 
up  your  mind  in  this  world?  It  is  usually  a  waste 
of  time  to  do  it.  These  two  would  have  to  stay 
with  us  as  far  as  Australia.  Then  they  could  go  on 
around  the  world,  or  go  back  the  way  they  had 
come;  the  distance  and  the  accommodations  and 
outlay  of  time  would  be  just  the  same,  whichever  of 
the  two  routes  they  might  elect  to  take.  Think  of 
it:  a  projected  excursion  of  five  hundred  miles 
gradually  enlarged,  without  any  elaborate  degree  of 
intention,  to  a  possible  twenty-four  thousand.  How 
ever,  they  were  used  to  extensions  by  this  time,  and 
did  not  mind  this  new  one  much. 

And  we  had  with  us  a  lawyer  from  Victoria,  who 
had  been  sent  out  by  the  Government  on  an  inter 
national  matter,  and  he  had  brought  his  wife  with 
him  and  left  the  children  at  home  with  the  servants 
• — and  now  what  was  to  be  done?  Go  ashore 
amongst  the  cholera  and  take  the  risks?  Most  cer- 


Following  the  Equator  51 

tainly  not.  They  decided  to  go  on,  to  the  Fiji 
islands,  wait  there  a  fortnight  for  the  next  ship,  and 
then  sail  for  home.  They  couldn't  foresee  that  they 
wouldn't  see  a  homeward-bound  ship  again  for  six 
weeks,  and  that  no  word  could  come  to  them  from 
the  children,  and  no  word  go  from  them  to  the 
children  in  all  that  time.  It  is  easy  to  make  plans 
in  this  world ;  even  a  cat  can  do  it ;  and  when  one 
is  out  in  those  remote  oceans  it  is  noticeable  that  a 
cat's  plans  and  a  man's  are  worth  about  the  same. 
There  is  much  the  same  shrinkage  in  both,  in  the 
matter  of  values. 

There  was  nothing  for  us  to  do  but  sit  about  the 
decks  in  the  shade  of  the  awnings  and  look  at  the 
distant  shore.  We  lay  in  luminous  blue  water; 
shoreward  the  water  was  green  —  green  and  brilliant; 
at  the  shore  itself  it  broke  in  a  long  white  ruffle,  and 
with  no  crash,  no  sound  that  we  could  hear.  The 
town  was  buried  under  a  mat  of  foliage  that  looked 
like  a  cushion  of  moss.  The  silky  mountains  were 
clothed  in  soft,  rich  splendors  of  melting  color,  and 
some  of  the  cliffs  were  veiled  in  slanting  mists.  I 
recognized  it  all.  It  was  just  as  I  had  seen  it  long 
before,  with  nothing  of  its  beauty  lost,  nothing  of 
its  charm  wanting. 

A  change  had  come,  but  that  was  political,  and 
not  visible  from  the  ship.  The  monarchy  of  my  day 
was  gone,  and  a  republic  was  sitting  in  its  seat.  It 
was  not  a  material  change.  The  old  imitation 
pomps,  the  fuss  and  feathers,  have  departed,  and 


52  Following  the  Equator 

the  royal  trademark  —  that  is  about  all  that  one 
could  miss,  I  suppose.  That  imitation  monarchy 
was  grotesque  enough,  in  my  time ;  if  it  had  held 
on  another  thirty  years  it  would  have  been  a  mon 
archy  without  subjects  of  the  king's  race. 

We  had  a  sunset  of  a  very  fine  sort.  The  vast  plain 
of  the  sea  was  marked  off  in  bands  of  sharply-con 
trasted  colors :  great  stretches  of  dark  blue,  others 
of  purple,  others  of  polished  bronze ;  the  billowy 
mountains  showed  all  sorts  of  dainty  browns  and 
greens,  blues  and  purples  and  blacks,  and  the 
rounded  velvety  backs  of  certain  of  them  made  one 
want  to  stroke  them,  as  one  would  the  sleek  back  of 
a  cat.  The  long,  sloping  promontory  projecting 
into  the  sea  at  the  west  turned  dim  and  leaden  and 
spectral,  then  became  suffused  with  pink  —  dissolved 
itself  in  a  pink  dream,  so  to  speak,  it  seemed  so  airy 
and  unreal.  Presently  the  cloud-rack  was  flooded 
with  fiery  splendors,  and  these  were  copied  on  the 
surface  of  the  sea,  and  it  made  one  drunk  with  de 
light  to  look  upon  it. 

From  talks  with  certain  of  our  passengers  whose 
home  was  Honolulu,  and  from  a  sketch  by  Mrs. 
Mary  H.  Krout,  I  was  able  to  perceive  what  the 
Honolulu  of  to-day  is,  as  compared  with  the  Hono 
lulu  of  my  time.  In  my  time  it  was  a  beautiful  little 
town,  made  up  of  snow-white  wooden  cottages  deli- 
ciously  smothered  in  tropical  vines  and  flowers  and 
trees  and  shrubs;  and  its  coral  roads  and  streets 
were  hard  and  smooth,  and  as  white  as  the  houses, 


Following  the  Equator  53 

The  outside  aspects  of  the  place  suggested  the  pres 
ence  of  a  modest  and  comfortable  prosperity  —  a 
general  prosperity  —  perhaps  one  might  strengthen 
the  term  and  say  universal.  There  were  no  fine 
houses,  no  fine  furniture.  There  were  no  decora 
tions.  Tallow  candles  furnished  the  light  for  the 
bedrooms,  a  whale-oil  lamp  furnished  it  for  the 
parlor.  Native  matting  served  as  carpeting.  In  the 
parlor  one  would  find  two  or  three  lithographs  on 
the  walls  —  portraits  as  a  rule:  Kamehameha  IV., 
Louis  Kossuth,  Jenny  Lind ;  and  maybe  an  engrav 
ing  or  two  :  Rebecca  at  the  Well,  Moses  smiting  the 
rock,  Joseph's  servants  finding  the  cup  in  Benjamin's 
sack.  There  would  be  a  center  table,  with  books  of 
a  tranquil  sort  on  it:  The  Whole  Duty  of  Man, 
Baxter's  Saints'  Rest,  Fox's  Martyrs,  Tupper's 
Proverbial  Philosophy,  bound  copies  of  The  Mis 
sionary  Herald  and  of  Father  Damon's  Seaman's 
Friend.  A  melodeon ;  a  music  stand,  with  Willie, 
We  Have  Missed  You,  Star  of  the  Evening,  Roll  on 
Silver  Moon,  Are  We  Most  There,  I  Would  not 
Live  Alway,  and  other  songs  of  love  and  sentiment, 
together  with  an  assortment  of  hymns.  A  what 
not  with  semi-globular  glass  paper-weights,  enclosing 
miniature  pictures  of  ships,  New  England  rural  snow 
storms,  and  the  like ;  sea-shells  with  Bible  texts 
carved  on  them  in  cameo  style;  native  curios; 
whale's  tooth  with  full-rigged  ship  carved  on  it. 
There  was  nothing  reminiscent  of  foreign  parts,  for 
nobody  had  been  abroad.  Trios  were  made  to  San 


54  Following  the  Equator 

Francisco,  but  that  could  not  be  called  going  abroad. 
Comprehensively  speaking,  nobody  traveled. 

But  Honolulu  has  grown  wealthy  since  then,  and 
of  course  wealth  has  introduced  changes;  some  of 
the  old  simplicities  have  disappeared.  Here  is  a 
modern  house,  as  pictured  by  Mrs.  Krout: 

"Almost  every  house  is  surrounded  by  extensive  lawns  and  gardens 
enclosed  by  walls  of  volcanic  stone  or  by  thick  hedges  of  the  brilliant 
hibiscus. 

"The  houses  are  most  tastefully  and  comfortably  furnished;  the 
floors  are  either  of  hard  wood  covered  with  rugs  or  with  fine  Indian 
matting,  while  there  is  a  preference,  as  in  most  warm  countries,  for 
rattan  or  bamboo  furniture;  there  are  the  usual  accessories  of  bric-a-brac, 
pictures,  books,  and  curios  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  for  these  island- 
dwellers  are  indefatigable  travelers. 

"Nearly  every  house  has  what  is  called  a  lanai.  It  is  a  large 
apartment,  roofed,  floored,  open  on  three  sides,  with  a  door  or  a  draped 
archway  opening  into  the  drawing-room.  Frequently  the  roof  is  formed 
by  the  thick  interlacing  boughs  of  the  hou  tree,  impervious  to  the  sun 
and  even  to  the  rain,  except  in  violent  storms.  Vines  are  trained  about 
the  sides  —  the  stephanotis  or  some  one  of  the  countless  fragrant  and 
blossoming  trailers  which  abound  in  the  islands.  There  are  also  curtains 
of  matting  that  may  be  drawn  to  exclude  the  sun  or  rain.  The  floor  is 
bare  for  coolness,  or  partially  covered  with  rugs,  and  the  lanai  is 
prettily  furnished  with  comfortable  chairs,  sofas,  and  tables  loaded  with 
flowers,  or  wonderful  ferns  in  pots. 

"The  lanai  is  the  favorite  reception-room,  and  here  at  any  social 
function  the  musical  program  is  given,  and  cakes  and  ices  are  served; 
here  morning  callers  are  received,  or  gay  riding  parties,  the  ladies  in 
pretty  divided  skirts,  worn  for  convenience  in  riding  astride, —  the  uni 
versal  mode  adopted  by  Europeans  and  Americans,  as  well  as  by  the 
natives. 

"The  comfort  and  luxury  of  such  an  apartment,  especially  at  a  sea 
shore  villa,  can  hardly  be  imagined.  The  soft  breezes  swept  across  it, 
heavy  with  the  fragrance  of  jasmine  and  gardenia,  and  through  the 
swaying  boughs  of  palm  and  mimosa  there  are  glimpses  of  rugged 
mountains,  their  summits  veiled  in  clouds,  of  purple  sea  with  the  white 


Following  the  Equator  55 

surf  beating  eternally  against  the  reefs, —  whiter  still  in  the  yellow  sun 
light  or  the  magical  moonlight  of  the  tropics." 

There:  rugs,  ices,  pictures,  lanais,  worldly  books, 
sinful  bric-a-brac  fetched  from  everywhere.  And 
the  ladies  riding  astride.  These  are  changes,  indeed. 
In  my  time  the  native  women  rode  astride,  but  the 
white  ones  lacked  the  courage  to  adopt  their  wise 
custom.  In  my  time  ice  was  seldom  seen  in  Hono 
lulu.  It  sometimes  came  in  sailing  vessels  from 
New  England  as  ballast;  and  then,  if  there  hap 
pened  to  be  a  man-of-war  in  port  and  balls  and  sup 
pers  raging  by  consequence,  the  ballast  was  worth 
six  hundred  dollars  a  ton,  as  is  evidenced  by  repu 
table  tradition.  But  the  ice  machine  has  traveled  all 
over  the  world,  now,  and  brought  ice  within  every 
body's  reach.  In  Lapland  and  Spitzbergen  no  one 
uses  native  ice  in  our  day,  except  the  bears  and  the 
walruses. 

The  bicycle  is  not  mentioned.  It  was  not  neces 
sary.  We  know  that  it  is  there,  without  inquiring. 
It  is  everywhere.  But  for  it,  people  could  never 
have  had  summer  homes  on  the  summit  of  Mont 
Blanc ;  before  its  day,  property  up  there  had  but  a 
nominal  value.  The  ladies  of  the  Hawaiian  capital 
learned  too  late  the  right  way  to  occupy  a  horse  — 
too  late  to  get  much  benefit  from  it.  The  riding- 
horse  is  retiring  from  business  everywhere  in  the 
world.  In  Honolulu  a  few  years  from  now  he  will 
be  only  a  tradition. 

We  all  know  about  Father  Damien,  the  French 


56  Following  the  Equator 

priest  who  voluntarily  forsook  the  world  and  went  to 
the  leper  island  of  Molokai  to  labor  among  its  popu 
lation  of  sorrowful  exiles  who  wait  there,  in  slow- 
consuming  misery,  for  death  to  come  and  release 
them  from  their  troubles,  and  we  know  that  the  thing 
which  he  knew  beforehand  would  happen,  did  hap 
pen  :  that  he  became  a  leper  himself,  and  died  of 
that  horrible  disease.  There  was  still  another  case 
of  self-sacrifice,  it  appears.  I  asked  after  "Billy" 
Ragsdale,  interpreter  to  the  Parliament  in  my  time 
—  a  half-white.  He  was  a  brilliant  young  fellow, 
and  very  popular.  As  an  interpreter  he  would  have 
been  hard  to  match  anywhere.  He  used  to  stand  up 
in  the  Parliament  and  turn  the  English  speeches  into 
Hawaiian  and  the  Hawaiian  speeches  into  English 
with  a  readiness  and  a  volubility  that  were  astonishing. 
I  asked  after  him,  and  was  told  that  his  prosperous 
career  was  cut  short  in  a  sudden  and  unexpected 
way,  just  as  he  was  about  to  marry  a  beautiful  half- 
caste  girl.  He  discovered,  by  some  nearly  invisible 
sign  about  his  skin,  that  the  poison  of  leprosy  was  in 
him.  The  secret  was  his  own,  and  might  be  kept 
concealed  for  years ;  but  he  would  not  be  treacher 
ous  to  the  girl  that  loved  him ;  he  would  not  marry 
her  to  a  doom  like  his.  And  so  he  put  his  affairs  in 
order,  and  went  around  to  all  his  friends  and  bade 
them  good-bye,  and  sailed  in  the  leper  ship  to 
Molokai.  There  he  died  the  loathsome  and  linger 
ing  death  that  all  lepers  die. 

In   this  place   let   me  insert   a  paragraph  or  two 


Following  the  Equator  57 

from  "The  Paradise  of  the  Pacific"   (Rev.  H.  H. 
Gowen)  : 

"  Poor  lepers !  It  is  easy  for  those  who  have  no  relatives  or  friends 
among  them  to  enforce  the  decree  of  segregation  to  the  letter,  but  who 
can  write  of  the  terrible,  the  heart-breaking  scenes  which  that  enforce 
ment  has  brought  about? 

"A  man  upon"  Hawaii  was  suddenly  taken  away  after  a  summary 
arrest,  leaving  behind  him  a  helpless  wife  about  to  give  birth  to  a  babe. 
The  devoted  wife  with  great  pain  and  risk  came  the  whole  journey  to 
Honolulu,  and  pleaded  until  the  authorities  were  unable  to  resist  her 
entreaty  that  she  might  go  and  live  like  a  leper  with  her  leper  husband. 

"A  woman  in  the  prime  of  life  and  activity  is  condemned  as  an 
incipient  leper,  suddenly  removed  from  her  home,  and  her  husband 
returns  to  find  his  two  helpless  babes  moaning  for  their  lost  mother. 

"  Imagine  it !  The  case  of  the  babies  is  hard,  but  its  bitterness  is  a 
trifle  —  less  than  a  trifle  —  less  than  nothing  —  compared  to  what  the 
mother  must  suffer;  and  suffer  minute  by  minute,  hour  by  hour,  day  by 
day,  month  by  month,  year  by  year,  without  respite,  relief,  or  any 
abatement  of  her  pain  till  she  dies. 

"  One  woman,  Luka  Kaaukau,  has  been  living  with  her  leper  hus 
band  in  the  settlement  for  twelve  years.  The  man  has  scarcely  a  joint 
left,  his  limbs  are  only  distorted  ulcerated  stumps,  for  four  years  his  wife 
has  put  every  particle  of  food  into  his  mouth.  He  wanted  his  wife  to 
abandon  his  wretched  carcass  long  ago,  as  she  herself  was  sound  and 
well,  but  Luka  said  that  she  was  content  to  remain  and  wait  on  the  man 
she  loved  till  the  spirit  should  be  freed  from  its  burden. 

"  I  myself  have  known  hard  cases  enough: — of  a  girl,  apparently  in 
full  health,  decorating  the  church  with  me  at  Easter,  who  before  Christ 
mas  is  taken  away  as  a  confirmed  leper;  of  a  mother  hiding  her  child  in 
the  mountains  for  years  so  that  not  even  her  dearest  friends  knew  that 
she  had  a  child  alive,  that  he  might  not  be  taken  away;  of  a  respectable 
white  man  taken  away  from  his  wife  and  family,  and  compelled  to 
become  a  dweller  in  the  Leper  Settlement,  where  he  is  counted  dead, 
even  by  the  insurance  companies" 

And  one  great  pity  of  it  all  is,  that  these  poor 
sufferers  are  innocent.  The  leprosy  does  not  come 
of  sins  which  they  committed,  but  of  sins  committed 


58  Following  the  Equator 

by  their  ancestors,  who   escaped  the   curse   of  lep 
rosy  ! 

Mr.  Gowan  has  made  record  of  a  certain  very 
striking  circumstance.  Would  you  expect  to  find  in 
that  awful  Leper  Settlement  a  custom  worthy  to  be 
transplanted  to  your  own  country?  They  have  one 
such,  and  it  is  inexpressibly  touching  and  beautiful. 
When  death  sets  open  the  prison  door  of  life  there, 
the  band  salutes  the  freed  soul  with  a  burst  of  glad 
music ! 


/>' 

yv 


CHAPTER   IV. 

A  dozen  dire£t  censures  are  easier  to  bear  than  one  morganatic  compliment, 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

AILED  from  Honolulu.     From  diary: 

Sept.  2.  Flocks  of  flying  fish  —  slim,  shapely, 
graceful,  and  intensely  white.  With  the  sun  on 
them  they  look  like  a  flight  of  silver  fruit-knives. 
They  are  able  to  fly  a  hundred  yards. 

Sept.  3.  In  9°  50'  north  latitude,  at  breakfast. 
Approaching  the  equator  on  a  long  slant.  Those 
of  us  who  have  never  seen  the  equator  are  a  good 
deal  excited.  I  think  I  would  rather  see  it  than  any 
other  thing  in  the  world.  We  entered  the  "dol 
drums  "  last  night — variable  winds,  bursts  of  rain, 
intervals  of  calm,  with  chopping  seas  and  a  wobbly 
and  drunken  motion  to  the  ship  —  a  condition  of 
things  findable  in  other  regions  sometimes,  but  present 
in  the  doldrums  always.  The  globe-girdling  belt 
called  the  doldrums  is  20  degrees  wide,  and  the 
thread  called  the  equator  lies  along  the  middle  of  it. 

Sept.  4..  Total  eclipse  of  the  moon  last  night. 
At  7.30  it  began  to  go  off.  At  total  —  or  about 
that — it  was  like  a  rich  rosy  cloud  with  a  tumbled 

(59) 


60  Following  the  Equator 

surface  framed  in  the  circle  and  projecting  from  it  — 
a  bulge  of  strawberry-ice,  so  to  speak.  At  half- 
eclipse  the  moon  was  like  a  gilded  acorn  in  its  cup. 
Sept.  5.  Closing  in  on  the  equator  this  noon.  A 
sailor  explained  to  a  young  girl  that  the  ship's  speed 
is  poor  because  we  are  climbing  up  the  bulge  toward 
the  center  of  the  globe;  but  that  when  we  should 
once  get  over,  at  the  equator,  and  start  down-hill, 
we  should  fly.  When  she  asked  him  the  other  day 
what  the  foreyard  was,  he  said  it  was  the  front 
yard,  the  open  area  in  the  front  end  of  the  ship. 
That  man  has  a  good  deal  of  learning  stored  up, 
and  the  girl  is  likely  to  get  it  all. 

Afternoon.  Crossed  the  equator.  In  the  distance 
it  looked  like  a  blue  ribbon  stretched  across  the 
ocean.  Several  passengers  kodak'd  it.  We  had  no 
fool  ceremonies,  no  fantastics,  no  horse-play.  All 
that  sort  of  thing  has  gone  out.  In  old  times  a 
sailor,  dressed  as  Neptune,  used  to  come  in  over  the 
bows,  with  his  suite,  and  lather  up  and  shave  every 
body  who  was  crossing  the  equator  for  the  first 
time,  and  then  cleanse  these  unfortunates  by  swing 
ing  them  from  the  yardarm  and  ducking  them  three 
times  in  the  sea.  This  was  considered  funny.  No 
body  knows  why.  No,  that  is  not  true.  We  do 
know  why.  Such  a  thing  could  never  be  funny  on 
land ;  no  part  of  the  old-time  grotesque  perform 
ances  gotten  up  on  shipboard  to  celebrate  the  pas 
sage  of  the  line  could  ever  be  funny  on  shore  — 
they  would  seem  dreary  and  witless  to  shore  people. 


Following  the  Equator  61 

But  the  shore  people  would  change  their  minds 
about  it  at  sea,  on  a  long  voyage.  On  such  a  voy 
age,  with  its  eternal  monotonies,  people's  intellects 
deteriorate ;  the  owners  of  the  intellects  soon  reach  a 
point  where  they  almost  seem  to  prefer  childish 
things  to  things  of  a  maturer  degree.  One  is  often 
surprised  at  the  juvenilities  which  grown  people 
indulge  in  at  sea,  and  the  interest  they  take  in  them, 
and  the  consuming  enjoyment  they  get  out  of  them. 
This  is  on  long  voyages  only.  The  mind  gradually 
becomes  inert,  dull,  blunted;  it  loses  its  accustomed 
interest  in  intellectual  things;  nothing  but  horse 
play  can  rouse  it,  nothing  but  wild  and  foolish 
grotesqueries  can  entertain  it.  On  short  voyages  it 
makes  no  such  exposure  of  itself;  it  hasn't  time  to 
slump  down  to  this  sorrowful  level. 

The  short-voyage  passenger  gets  his  chief  physical 
exercise  out  of  "horse-billiards" — shovel-board. 
It  is  a  good  game.  We  play  it  in  this  ship.  A 
quartermaster  chalks  off  a  diagram  like  this  —  on 
the  deck.  (See  next  page.) 

The  player  uses  a  cue  that  is  like  a  broom-handle 
with  a  quarter-moon  of  wood  fastened  to  the  end  of 
it.  With  this  he  shoves  wooden  disks  the  size  of  a 
saucer  —  he  gives  the  disk  a  vigorous  shove  and 
sends  it  fifteen  or  twenty  feet  along  the  deck  and 
lands  it  in  one  of  the  squares  if  he  can.  If  it  stays 
there  till  the  inning  is  played  out,  it  will  count  as 
many  points  in  the  game  as  the  figure  in  the  square 
it  has  stopped  in  represents.  The  adversary  plays 


62 


Following  the  Equator 


to  knock  that  disk  out  and  leave  his  own  in  its 
place  —  particularly  if  it  rests  upon  the  9  or  10  or 
some  other  of  the  high  numbers ;  but  if  it  rests  in 

"HORSE   BILLIARDS." 


8 


10  Off 


the  "  lO-off  "  he  backs  it  up  —  lands  his  disk  behind 
it  a  foot  or  two,  to  make  it  difficult  for  its  owner  to 
knock  it  out  of  that  damaging  place  and  improve 
his  record.  When  the  inning  is  played  out  it  may 


Following  the  Equator  63 

be  found  that  each  adversary  has  placed  his  four 
disks  where  they  count;  it  may  be  found  that  some 
of  them  are  touching  chalk  lines  and  not  counting; 
and  very  often  it  will  be  found  that  there  has  been  a 
general  wreckage,  and  that  riot  a  disk  haj  been  left 
within  the  diagram.  Anyway,  the  result  is  recorded, 
whatever  it  is,  and  the  game  goes  on.  The  game 
is  100  points,  and  it  takes  from  twenty  minutes  to 
forty  to  play  it,  according  to  luck  and  the  condition 
of  the  sea.  It  is  an  exciting  game,  and  the  crowd 
of  spectators  furnish  abundance  of  applause  for 
fortunate  shots  and  plenty  of  laughter  for  the  other 
kind.  It  is  a  game  of  skill,  but  at  the  same  time 
the  uneasy  motion  of  the  ship  is  constantly  inter 
fering  with  skill;  this  makes  it  a  chancy  game,  and 
the  element  of  luck  comes  largely  in. 

We  had  a  couple  of  grand  tournaments,  to 
determine  who  should  be  "  Champion  of  the  Pa 
cific  "  :  they  included  among  the  participants  nearly 
all  the  passengers,  of  both  sexes,  and  the  officers 
of  the  ship,  and  they  afforded  many  days  of 
stupendous  interest  and  excitement,  and  murderous 
exercise  —  for  horse-billiards  is  a  physically  vio 
lent  game. 

The  figures  in  the  following  record  of  some  of 
the  closing  games  in  the  first  tournament  will  show, 
better  than  any  description,  how  very  chancy  the 
game  is.  The  losers  here  represented  had  all  been 
winners  in  the  previous  games  of  the  series,  some  of 
them  by  fine  majorities : 


64  Following  the  Equator 

Chase,  102  Mrs.  D.,  57  Mortimer,  105  The  Surgeon,  9* 

Miss  C.,  105  Mrs.  T.,  9  Clemens,  101  Taylor,             92 

Taylor,  109  Davies,  95  Miss  C.,  108  Mortimer,        55 

Thomas,  102  Roper,  76  Clemens,  ill  Miss  C.,           89 

Coomber,  106  Chase,  98 

And  so  on;  until  but  three  couples  of  winners 
were  left.  Then  I  beat  my  man,  young  Smith  beat 
his  man,  and  Thomas  beat  his.  This  reduced  the 
combatants  to  three.  Smith  and  I  took  the  deck, 
and  I  led  off.  At  the  close  of  the  first  inning  I  was 
10  worse  than  nothing  and  Smith  had  scored  7. 
The  luck  continued  against  me.  When  I  was  57, 
Smith  was  97  —  within  3  of  out.  The  luck  changed 
then.  He  picked  up  a  lO-off  or  so,  and  couldn't 
recover.  I  beat  him. 

The  next  game  would  end  tournament  No.  I. 

Mr.  Thomas  and  I  were  the  contestants.  He 
won  the  lead  and  went  to  the  bat  —  so  to  speak. 
And  there  he  stood,  with  the  crotch  of  his  cue  rest 
ing  against  his  disk  while  the  ship  rose  slowly  up, 
sank  slowly  down,  rose  again,  sank  again.  She 
never  seemed  to  rise  to  suit  him  exactly.  She 
started  up  once  more ;  and  when  she  was  nearly 
ready  for  the  turn,  he  let  drive  and  landed  his  disk 
just  within  the  left-hand  end  of  the  10.  (Applause.) 
The  umpire  proclaimed  "a  good  10,"  and  the 
gamekeeper  set  it  down.  I  played  :  my  disk  grazed 
the  edge  of  Mr.  Thomas's  disk,  and  went  out  of  the 
diagram.  (No  applause.) 

Mr.  Thomas  played  again  —  and  landed  his  second 
disk  alongside  of  the  first,  and  almost  touching  its 
right-hand  side.  "Good  10."  (Great  applause.} 


Following  the  Equator  65 

I  played,  and  missed  both  of  them.  (No  ap 
plause.) 

Mr.  Thomas  delivered  his  third  shot  and  landed 
his  disk  just  at  the  right  of  the  other  two.  "  Good 
10."  (Immense  applause.) 

There  they  lay,  side  by  side,  the  three  in  a  row. 
It  did  not  seem  possible  that  anybody  could  miss 
them.  Still  I  did  it.  (Immense  silence.) 

Mr.  Thomas  played  his  last  disk.  It  seems  in 
credible,  but  he  actually  landed  that  disk  alongside 
of  the  others,  and  just  to  the  right  of  them  —  a 
straight  solid  row  of  4  disks.  (Tumultuous  and 
long-continued  applause.) 

Then  I  played  my  last  disk.  Again  it  did  not 
seem  possible  that  anybody  could  miss  that  row  —  a 
row  which  would  have  been  14  inches  long  if  the 
disks  had  been  clamped  together;  whereas,  with  the 
spaces  separating  them  they  made  a  longer  row  than 
that.  But  I  did  it.  It  may  be  that  I  was  getting 
nervous. 

I  think  it  unlikely  that  that  innings  has  ever  had 
its  parallel  in  the  history  of  horse-billiards.  To 
place  the  four  disks  side  by  side  in  the  10  was  an 
extraordinary  feat;  indeed,  it  was  a  kind  of  miracle. 
To  miss  them  was  another  miracle.  It  will  take  a 
century  to  produce  another  man  who  can  place  the 
four  disks  in  the  10;  and  longer  than  that  to  find  a 
man  who  can't  knock  them  out.  I  was  ashamed  of 
my  performance  at  the  time,  but  now  that  I  reflect 
upon  it  I  see  that  it  was  rather  fine  and  difficult. 


66  Following  the  Equator 

Mr.  Thomas  kept  his  luck,  and  won  the  game, 
and  later  the  championship. 

In  a  minor  tournament  I  won  the  prize,  which 
was  a  Waterbury  watch.  I  put  it  in  my  trunk.  In 
Pretoria,  South  Africa,  nine  months  afterward,  my 
proper  watch  broke  down  and  I  took  the  Waterbury 
out,  wound  it,  set  it  by  the  great  clock  on  the 
Parliament  House  (8.05),  then  went  back  to  my 
room  and  went  to  bed,  tired  from  a  long  railway 
journey.  The  parliamentary  clock  had  a  peculiarity 
which  I  was  not  aware  of  at  the  time  —  a  peculiarity 
which  exists  in  no  other  clock,  and  would  not  exist 
in  that  one  if  it  had  been  made  by  a  sane  person ; 
on  the  half-hour  it  strikes  the  succeeding  hour,  then 
strikes  the  hour  again  at  the  proper  time.  I  lay 
reading  and  smoking  awhile;  then,  when  I  could 
hold  my  eyes  open  no  longer  and  was  about  to  put 
out  the  light,  the  great  clock  began  to  boom,  and  I 
counted  —  ten.  I  reached  for  the  Waterbury  to  see 
how  it  was  getting  along.  It  was  marking  9.30.  It 
seemed  rather  poor  speed  for  a  three-dollar  watch, 
but  I  supposed  that  the  climate  was  affecting  it.  I 
shoved  it  half  an  hour  ahead,  and  took  to  my  book 
and  waited  to  see  what  would  happen.  At  10  the 
great  clock  struck  ten  again.  I  looked  —  the 
Waterbury  was  marking  half-past  10.  This  was 
too  much  speed  for  the  money,  and  it  troubled  me. 
I  pushed  the  hands  back  a  half  hour,  and  waited 
once  more  ;  I  had  to,  for  I  was  vexed  and  restless 
now,  and  my  sleepiness  was  gone.  By  and  by  the 


Following  the  Equator  67 

great  clock  struck  1 1 .  The  Waterbury  was  marking 
10.30.  I  pushed  it  ahead  half  an  hour,  with  some 
show  of  temper.  By  and  by  the  great  clock  struck 
II  again.  The  Waterbury  showed  up  11.30,  now, 
and  I  beat  her  brains  out  against  the  bedstead.  I 
was  sorry  next  day,  when  I  found  out. 

To  return  to  the  ship. 

The  average  human  being  is  a  perverse  creature ; 
and  when  he  isn't  that,  he  is  a  practical  joker. 
The  result  to  the  other  person  concerned  is  about 
the  same:  that  is,  he  is  made  to  suffer.  The  wash 
ing  down  of  the  decks  begins  at  a  very  early  hour  in 
all  ships;  in  but  few  ships  are  any  measures  taken 
to  protect  the  passengers,  either  by  waking  or  warn 
ing  them,  or  by  sending  a  steward  to  close  their 
ports.  And  so  the  deck-washers  have  their  oppor 
tunity,  and  they  use  it.  They  send  a  bucket  of 
water  slashing  along  the  side  of  the  ship  and  into 
the  ports,  drenching  the  passenger's  clothes,  and 
often  the  passenger  himself.  This  good  old  custom 
prevailed  in  this  ship,  and  under  unusually  favorable 
circumstances,  for  in  the  blazing  tropical  regions  a 
removable  zinc  thing  like  a  sugar-shovel  projects 
from  the  port  to  catch  the  wind  and  bring  it  in ; 
this  thing  catches  the  wash-water  and  brings  it  in, 
too  —  and  in  flooding  abundance.  Mrs.  I.,  an  in 
valid,  had  to  sleep  on  the  locker-sofa  under  her 
port,  and  every  time  she  overslept  and  thus  failed 
to  take  care  of  herself,  the  deck-washers  drowned 
her  out. 

E* 


68  Following  the  Equator 

And  the  painters,  what  a  good  time  they  had ! 
This  ship  would  be  going  into  dock  for  a  month  in 
Sydney  for  repairs;  but  no  matter,  painting  was 
going  on  all  the  time  somewhere  or  other.  The 
ladies'  dresses  were  constantly  getting  ruined,  never 
theless  protests  and  supplications  went  for  nothing. 
Sometimes  a  lady,  taking  an  afternoon  nap  on  deck 
near  a  ventilator  or  some  other  thing  that  didn't 
need  painting,  would  wake  up  by  and  by  and  find 
that  the  humorous  painter  had  been  noiselessly 
daubing  that  thing  and  had  splattered  her  white 
gown  all  over  with  little  greasy  yellow  spots. 

The  blame  for  this  untimely  painting  did  not  lie 
with  the  ship's  officers,  but  with  custom.  As  far 
back  as  Noah's  time  it  became  law  that  ships  must 
be  constantly  painted  and  fussed  at  when  at  sea; 
custom  grew  out  of  the  law,  and  at  sea  custom 
knows  no  death ;  this  custom  will  continue  until  the 
sea  goes  dry. 

Sept.  8. —  Sunday.  We  are  moving  so  nearly 
south  that  we  cross  only  about  two  meridians  of 
longitude  a  day.  This  morning  we  were  in  longi 
tude  178  west  from  Greenwich,  and  57  degrees  west 
from  San  Francisco.  To-morrow  we  shall  be  close 
to  the  center  of  the  globe  —  the  iSoth  degree  of 
west  longitude  and  iSoth  degree  of  east  longitude. 

And  then  we  must  drop  out  a  day — lose  a  day 
out  of  our  lives,  a  day  never  to  be  found  again. 
We  shall  all  die  one  day  earlier  than  from  the  be 
ginning  of  time  we  were  foreordained  to  die.  We 


Following  the  Equator  69 

shall  be  a  day  behindhand  all  through  eternity. 
We  shall  always  be  saying  to  the  other  angels, 
"  Fine  day  to-day,"  and  they  will  be  always  retort 
ing,  "  But  it  isn't  to-day,  it's  to-morrow."  We 
shall  be  in  a  state  of  confusion  all  the  time  and 
shall  never  know  what  true  happiness  is. 

Next  Day.  Sure  enough,  it  has  happened. 
Yesterday  it  was  September  8,  Sunday ;  to-day, 
per  the  bulletin-board  at  the  head  of  the  companion- 
way,  it  is  September  10,  Tuesday.  There  is  some 
thing  uncanny  about  it.  And  uncomfortable.  In 
fact,  nearly  unthinkable,  and  wholly  unrealizable, 
when  one  comes  to  consider  it.  While  we  were 
crossing  the  iSoth  meridian  it  was  Sunday  in  the 
stern  of  the  ship  where  my  family  were,  and  Tuesday 
in  the  bow  where  I  was.  They  were  there  eating 
the  half  of  a  fresh  apple  on  the  8th,  and  I  was  at 
the  same  time  eating  the  other  half  of  it  on  the 
loth  —  and  I  could  notice  how  stale  it  was,  already. 
The  family  were  the  same  age  that  they  were  when 
I  had  left  them  five  minutes  before,  but  I  was  a  day 
older  now  than  I  was  then.  The  day  they  were 
living  in  stretched  behind  them  half  way  round  the 
globe,  across  the  Pacific  Ocean  and  America  and 
Europe;  the  day  I  wras  living  in  stretched  in  front 
cf  me  around  the  other  half  to  meet  it.  They  were 
stupendous  days  for  bulk  and  stretch ;  apparently 
much  larger  days  than  we  had  ever  been  in  before. 
All  previous  days  had  been  but  shrunk-up  little 
things  by  comparison.  The  difference  in  tempera- 


70  Following  the  Equator 

ture  between  the  two  days  was  very  marked,  theif 
day  being  hotter  than  mine  because  it  was  closer  to 
the  equator. 

Along  about  the  moment  that  we  were  crossing 
the  Great  Meridian  a  child  was  born  in  the  steerage, 
and  now  there  is  no  way  to  tell  which  day  it  was 
born  on.  The  nurse  thinks  it  was  Sunday,  the 
surgeon  thinks  it  was  Tuesday.  The  child  will 
never  know  its  own  birthday.  It  will  always  be 
choosing  first  one  and  then  the  other,  and  will  never 
be  able  to  make  up  its  mind  permanently.  This 
will  breed  vacillation  and  uncertainty  in  its  opinions 
about  religion,  and  politics,  and  business,  and  sweet 
hearts,  and  everything,  and  will  undermine  its  prin 
ciples,  and  rot  them  away,  and  make  the  poor  thing 
characterless,  and  its  success  in  life  impossible. 
Every  one  in  the  ship  says  so.  And  this  is  not  all 
—  in  fact,  not  the  worst.  For  there  is  an  enormously 
rich  brewer  in  the  ship  who  said  as  much  as  ten 
days  ago,  that  if  the  child  was  born  on  his  birthday 
he  would  give  it  ten  thousand  dollars  to  start  its  little 
life  with.  His  birthday  was  Monday,  the  Qth  of 
September. 

If  the  ships  all  moved  in  the  one  direction  — 
westward,  I  mean  —  the  world  would  suffer  a  pro 
digious  loss  in  the  matter  of  valuable  time,  through 
the  dumping  overboard  on  the  Great  Meridian  of 
such  multitudes  of  days  by  ships'  crews  and  passen 
gers.  But,  fortunately,  the  ships  do  not  all  sail  west, 
half  of  them  sail  east.  So  there  is  no  real  loss. 


Following  the  Equator  71 

These  latter  pick  up  all  the  discarded  days  and  add 
them  to  the  world's  stock  again;  and  about  as  good 
as  new,  too;  for  of  course  the  salt  water  preserves 
them- 


CHAPTER  V. 

Noise  proves  nothing.    Often  a  hen  who  has  merely  laid  an  egg  cackles  as 
jf  she  had  laid  an  asteroid.  — PudcCnkead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WEDNESDAY,  Sept.  n.  In  this  world  we  often 
make  mistakes  of  judgment.  We  do  not,  as 
a  rule,  get  out  of  them  sound  and  whole,  but  some 
times  we  do.  At  dinner  yesterday  evening  —  pres 
ent,  a  mixture  of  Scotch,  English,  American, 
Canadian,  and  Australasian  folk  —  a  discussion 
broke  out  about  the  pronunciation  of  certain  Scot 
tish  words.  This  was  private  ground,  and  the  non- 
Scotch  nationalities,  with  one  exception,  discreetly 
kept  still.  But  I  am  not  discreet,  and  I  took  a 
hand.  I  didn't  know  anything  about  the  subject, 
but  I  took  a  hand  just  to  have  something  to  do. 
At  that  moment  the  word  in  dispute  was  the  word 
three.  One  Scotchman  was  claiming  that  the  peas 
antry  of  Scotland  pronounced  it  three*  his  adver 
saries  claimed  that  they  didn't  —  that  they  pro 
nounced  it  thraw.  The  solitary  Scot  was  having  a 
sultry  time  of  it,  so  I  thought  I  would  enrich  him 
with  my  help.  In  my  position  I  was  necessarily 
quite  impartial,  and  was  equally  as  well  and  as  ill 
equipped  to  fight  on  the  one  side  as  on  the  other. 

(72) 


Following  the  Equator  73 

So  I  spoke  up  and  said  the  peasantry  pronounced 
the  word  three,  not  thraw.  It  was  an  error  of  judg 
ment.  There  was  a  moment  of  astonished  and 
ominous  silence,  then  weather  ensued.  The  storm 
rose  and  spread  in  a  surprising  way,  and  I  was 
snowed  under  in  a  very  few  minutes.  It  was  a  bad 
defeat  for  me — a  kind  of  Waterloo.  It  promised 
to  remain  so,  and  I  wished  I  had  had  better  sense 
than  to  enter  upon  such  a  forlorn  enterprise.  But 
just  then  I  had  a  saving  thought  —  at  least  a  thought 
that  offered  a  chance.  While  the  storm  was  still 
raging,  I  made  up  a  Scotch  couplet,  and  then  spoke 
up  and  said : 

'  Very   well,    don't    say    any    more.     I    confess 
defeat.     I  thought  I  knew,  but  I  see   my  mistake. 
I  was  deceived  by  one  of  your  Scotch  poets." 
Oh,  come!     Name  him.1 


un,  comei     i\ame  mm." 
"  Robert  Burns*" 

It  is  wonderful  the  power  of  that  name.  These 
men  looked  doubtful  —  but  paralyzed,  all  the  same. 
They  were  quite  silent  for  a  moment ;  then  one  of 
them  said  —  with  the  reverence  in  his  voice  which  is 
always  present  in  a  Scotchman's  tone  when  he  utters 
the  name: 

"  Does  Robbie  Burns  say  —  what  does  he  say?" 

"  This  is  what  he  says : 

"  *  There  were  nae  bairns  but  only  three  — 
Ane  at  the  breast,  twa  at  the  knee.'  " 

It  ended  the  discussion.  There  was  no  man  there 
profane  enough,  disloyal  enough,  to  say  any  word 


74  Following  the  Equator 

against  a  thing  which  Robert  Burns  had  settled.  I 
shall  always  honor  that  great  name  for  the  salvation 
it  brought  me  in  this  time  of  my  sore  need. 

It  is  my  belief  that  nearly  any  invented  quotation, 
played  with  confidence,  stands  a  good  chance  to 
deceive.  There  are  people  who  think  that  honesty 
is  always  the  best  policy.  This  is  a  superstition ; 
there  are  times  when  the  appearance  of  it  is  worth 
six  of  it. 

We  are  moving  steadily  southward  —  getting 
further  and  further  down  under  the  projecting 
paunch  of  the  globe.  Yesterday  evening  we  saw 
the  Big  Dipper  and  the  north  star  sink  below  the 
horizon  and  disappear  from  our  world.  No,  not 
*' we,"  but  they.  They  saw  it  —  somebody  saw  it 
• — and  told  me  about  it.  But  it  is  no  matter,  I  was 
not  caring  for  those  things.  I  am  tired  of  them, 
anyway.  I  think  they  are  well  enough,  but  one 
doesn't  want  them  always  hanging  around.  My 
interest  was  all  in  the  Southern  Cross.  I  had  never 
seen  that.  I  had  heard  about  it  all  my  life,  and  it 
was  but  natural  that  I  should  be  burning  to  see  it. 
No  other  constellation  makes  so  much  talk.  I  had 
nothing  against  the  Big  Dipper  —  and  naturally 
couldn't  have  anything  against  it,  since  it  is  a  citizen 
of  our  own  sky,  and  the  property  of  the  United 
States  —  but  I  did  want  it  to  move  out  of  the  way 
and  give  this  foreigner  a  chance.  Judging  by  the 
size  of  the  talk  which  the  Southern  Cross  had  made, 
I  supposed  it  would  need  a  sky  all  to  itself. 


i       j  i.&\ 
Following  the  Equator  75 

But  that  was  a  mistake.  We  saw  the  Cross  to 
night,  and  it  is  not  large.  Not  large,  and  not 
strikingly  bright.  But  it  was  low  down  toward  the 
horizon,  and  it  may  improve  when  it  gets  up  higher 
in  the  sky.  It  is  ingeniously  named,  for  it  looks 
just  as  a  cross  would  look  if  it  looked  like  something 
else.  But  that  description  does  not  describe ;  it  is 
too  vague,  too  general,  too  indefinite.  It  does  after 
a  fashion  suggest  a  cross  —  a  cross  that  is  out  of 
repair  —  or  out  of  drawing;  not  correctly  shaped. 
It  is  long,  with  a  short  cross-bar,  and  the  cross-bar 
is  canted  out  of  the  straight  line. 

It  consists  of  four  large  stars  and  one  little  one. 
The  little  one  is  out  of  line 
and  further  damages  the 
shape.  It  should  have  been 
placed  at  the  intersection  of 
the  stem  and  the  cross-bar. 

If  you  do  not  draw  an  imaginary  line  from  star  to 
star  it  does  not  suggest  a  cross  —  nor  anything  in 
particular. 

One  must  ignore  the  little  star,  and  leave  it  out  of 
the  combination  —  it  confuses  everything.  If  you 
leave  it  out,  then  you  can  make  out  of  the  four  stars 
a  sort  of  cross  —  out  of  true;  or  a  sort  of  kite  — 
out  of  true;  or  a  sort  of  coffin  —  out  of  true. 

Constellations  have  always  been  troublesome  things 
to  name.  If  you  give  one  of  them  a  fanciful  name, 
it  will  always  refuse  to  live  up  to  it;  it  will  always 
persist  in  not  resembling  the  thing  it  has  been  named 


76  Following  the  Equator 

for.  Ultimately,  to  satisfy  the  public,  the  fanci 
ful  name  has  to  be  discarded  for  a  common-sense 
one,  a  manifestly  descriptive  one.  The  Great  Bear 
remained  the  Great  Bear  —  and  unrecognizable  as 
such  —  for  thousands  of  years;  and  people  com 
plained  about  it  all  the  time,  and  quite  properly; 
but  as  soon  as  it  became  the  property  of  the  United 
States,  Congress  changed  it  to  the  Big  Dipper,  and 
now  everybody  is  satisfied,  and  there  is  no  more 
talk  about  riots.  I  would  not  change  the  Southern 
Cross  to  the  Southern  Coffin,  I  would  change  it  to 
the  Southern  Kite ;  for  up  there  in  the  general 
emptiness  is  the  proper  home  of  a  kite,  but  not  for 
coffins  and  crosses  and  dippers.  In  a  little  while, 
now  —  I  cannot  tell  exactly  how  long  it  will  be  — 

N   y 

the  globe  will  belong  to  the  English-speaking  race ; 
and  of  course  the  skies  also.  Then  the  constellations 
will  be  re-organized,  and  polished  up,  and  re-named 
— the  most  of  them  "Victoria,"  I  reckon,  but  this 
one  will  sail  thereafter  as  the  Southern  Kite,  or  go 
out  of  business.  Several  towns  and  things,  here 
and  there,  have  been  named  for  Her  Majesty  already. 
In  these  past  few  days  we  are  plowing  through  a 
mighty  Milky  Way  of  islands.  They  are  so  thick  on 
the  map  that  one  would  hardly  expect  to  find  room 
between  them  for  a  canoe ;  yet  we  seldom  glimpse 
one.  Once  we  saw  the  dim  bulk  of  a  couple  of  them, 
far  away,  spectral  and  dreamy  things ;  members 
of  the  Home  —  Alofa  and  Fortuna.  On  the  larger 
one  are  two  rival  native  kings  —  and  they  have  a 


Following  the  Equator 

time  together.  They  are  Catholics ;  so  are  their  peo 
ple.  The  missionaries  there  are  French  priests. 

From  the  multitudinous  islands  in  these  regions 
the  "  recruits  "  for  the  Queensland  plantations  were 
formerly  drawn;  are  still  drawn  from  them,  I  be 
lieve.  Vessels  fitted  up  like  old-time  slavers  came 
here  and  carried  off  the  natives  to  serve  as  laborers 
in  the  great  Australian  province.  In  the  beginning 
it  was  plain,  simple  man-stealing,  as  per  testimony 
of  the  missionaries.  This  has  been  denied,  but  not 
disproven.  Afterward  it  was  forbidden  by  law  to 
"  recruit"  a  native  without  his  consent,  and  govern 
mental  agents  were  sent  in  all  recruiting  vessels  to 
see  that  the  law  was  obeyed  —  which  they  did,  ac 
cording  to  the  recruiting  people;  and  which  they 
sometimes  didn't,  according  to  the  missionaries.  A 
man  could  be  lawfully  recruited  for  a  three-years 
term  of  service ;  he  could  volunteer  for  another 
term  if  he  so  chose ;  when  his  time  was  up  he  could 
return  to  his  island.  And  would  also  have  the 
means  to  do  it;  for  the  government  required  the 
employer  to  put  money  in  its  hands  for  this  purpose 
before  the  recruit  was  delivered  to  him. 

Captain  Wawrn  was  a  recruiting  shipmaster  during 
many  years.  From  his  pleasant  book  one  gets  the 
idea  that  the  recruiting  business  was  quite  popular 
with  the  islanders,  as  a  rule.  And  yet  that  did  not 
make  the  business  wholly  dull  and  uninteresting; 
for  one  finds  rather  frequent  little  breaks  in  the 

monotony  of  it — like  this,  for  instance: 
6* 


78  Following  the  Equator 

"The  afternoon  of  our  arrival  at  Leper  Island  the  schooner  was 
lying  almost  becalmed  under  the  lee  of  the  lofty  central  portion  of  the 
island,  about  three-quarters  of  a  mile  from  the  shore.  The  boats  were 
in  sight  at  some  distance.  The  recruiter-boat  had  run  into  a  small  nook 
on  the  rocky  coast,  under  a  high  bank,  above  which  stood  a  solitary  hut 
backed  by  dense  forest.  The  government  agent  and  mate  in  the  second 
boat  lay  about  400  yards  to  the  westward. 

"  Suddenly  we  heard  the  sound  of  firing,  followed  by  yells  from  the 
natives  on  shore,  and  then  we  saw  the  recruiter- boat  push  out  with  a 
seemingly  diminished  crew.  The  mate's  boat  pulled  quickly  up,  took 
her  in  tow,  and  presently  brought  her  alongside,  all  her  own  crew  being 
more  or  less  hurt.  It  seems  the  natives  had  called  them  into  the  place 
on  pretense  of  friendship.  A  crowd  gathered  about  the  stern  of  the 
boat,  and  several  fellows  even  got  into  her.  All  of  a  sudden  our  men 
were  attacked  with  clubs  and  tomahawks.  The  recruiter  escaped  the 
first  blows  aimed  at  him,  making  play  with  his  fists  until  he  had  an 
opportunity  to  draw  his  revolver.  'Tom  Sayers,'  a  Mare  man,  received 
a  tomahawk  blow  on  the  head  which  laid  the  scalp  open  but  did  not 
penetrate  his  skull,  fortunately.  '  Bobby  Towns,'  another  Mare  boat 
man,  had  both  his  thumbs  cut  in  warding  off  blows,  one  of  them  being 
so  nearly  severed  from  the  hand  that  the  doctors  had  to  finish  the 
operation.  Lihu,  a  Lifu  boy,  the  recruiter's  special  attendant,  was  cut 
and  pricked  in  various  places,  but  nowhere  seriously.  Jack,  an  unlucky 
Tanna  recruit,  who  had  been  engaged  to  act  as  boatman,  received  an 
arrow  through  his  forearm,  the  head  of  which  —  a  piece  of  bone  seven 
or  eight  inches  long  —  was  still  in  the  limb,  protruding  from  both  sides, 
when  the  boats  returned.  The  recruiter  himself  would  have  got  off 
scot-free  had  not  an  arrow  pinned  one  of  his  fingers  to  the  loom  of  the 
steering-oar  just  as  they  were  getting  off.  The  fight  had  been  short  but 
sharp.  The  enemy  lost  two  men,  both  shot  dead." 

The  truth  is,  Captain  Wawn  furnishes  such  a 
crowd  of  instances  of  fatal  encounters  between 
natives  and  French  and  English  recruiting-crews  (for 
the  French  are  in  the  business  for  the  plantations  of 
New  Caledonia),  that  one  is  almost  persuaded  that 
recruiting  is  not  thoroughly  popular  among  the 
islanders;  else  why  this  bristling  string  of  attacks 


Following  the  Equator  79 

and  blood-curdling  slaughter?  The  captain  lays  it 
all  to  "Exeter  Hall  influence."  But  for  the  med 
dling  philanthropists,  the  native  fathers  and  mothers 
would  be  fond  of  seeing  their  children  carted  into 
exile  and  now  and  then  the  grave,  instead  of  weep 
ing  about  it  and  trying  to  kill  the  kind  recruiters. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

He  was  as  shy  as  a  newspaper  is  when  referring  to  its  own  merits. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

CAPTAIN  Wawn  is  crystal-clear  on  one  point. 
He  does  not  approve  of  missionaries.  They 
obstruct  his  business.  They  make  "  Recruiting," 
as  he  calls  it  ("  Slave-Catching,"  as  they  call  it  in 
their  frank  way)  a  trouble  when  it  ought  to  be  just 
a  picnic  and  a  pleasure  excursion.  The  missionaries 
have  their  opinion  about  the  manner  in  which  the 
Labor  Traffic  is  conducted,  and  about  the  recruiter's 
evasions  of  the  law  of  the  Traffic,  and  about  the 
Traffic  itself :  and  it  is  distinctly  uncomplimentary  to 
the  Traffic  and  to  everything  connected  with  it,  in 
cluding  the  law  for  its  regulation.  Captain  Wawn's 
book  is  of  very  recent  date;  I  have  by  me  a 
pamphlet  of  still  later  date  —  hot  from  the  press,  in 
fact  —  by  Rev.  Wm.  Gray,  a  missionary;  and  the 
book  and  the  pamphlet  taken  together  make  exceed 
ingly  interesting  reading,  to  my  mind. 

Interesting,  and  easy  to  understand  —  except  in 
one  detail,  which  I  will  mention  presently.  It  is 
easy  to  understand  why  the  Queensland  sugar  planter 

(80) 


Following  the  Equator  81 

should  want  the  Kanaka  recruit:  he  is  cheap.  Very 
cheap,  in  fact.  These  are  the  figures  paid  by  the 
planter :  £20  to  the  recruiter  for  getting  the  Kanaka 
• — or  "catching"  him,  as  the  missionary  phrase 
goes;  £3  to  the  Queensland  government  for  **  super 
intending  "  the  importation;  ,£5  deposited  with  the 
Government  for  the  Kanaka's  passage  home  when 
his  three  years  are  up,  in  case  he  shall  live  that  long; 
about  £25  to  the  Kanaka  himself  for  three  years' 
wages  and  clothing;  total  payment  for  the  use  of  a 
man  three  years,  £$3 ;  or,  including  diet,  £60. 
Altogether,  a  hundred  dollars  a  year.  One  can  un 
derstand  why  the  recruiter  is  fond  of  the  business ; 
the  recruit  costs  him  a  few  cheap  presents  (given  to 
the  recruit's  relatives,  not  to  the  recruit  himself), 
and  the  recruit  is  worth  £20  to  the  recruiter  when 
delivered  in  Queensland.  All  this  is  clear  enough; 
but  the  thing  that  is  not  clear  is,  what  there  is  about 
it  all  to  persuade  the  recruit.  He  is  young  and 
brisk;  life  at  home  in  his  beautiful  island  is  one  lazy, 
long  holiday  to  him ;  or  if  he  wants  to  work  he  can 
turn  out  a  couple  of  bags  of  copra  per  week  and  sell 
it  for  four  or  five  shillings  a  bag.  In  Queensland  he 
must  get  up  at  dawn  and  work  from  eight  to  twelve 
hours  a  day  in  the  cane-fields  —  in  a  much  hotter 
climate  than  he  is  used  to  —  and  get  less  than  four 
shillings  a  week  for  it. 

I  cannot  understand  his  willingness  to  go  to 
Queensland.  It  is  a  deep  puzzle  to  me.  Here  is 
the  explanation,  from  the  planter's  point  of  view; 


•. 

82  Following  the  Equator 

at  least  I  gather  from  the  missionary's  pamphlet  that 
it  is  the  planter's: 

"When  he  comes  from  his  home  he  is  a  savage,  pure  and  simple. 
He  feels  no  shame  at  his  nakedness  and  want  of  adornment.  When  he 
returns  home  he  does  so  well  dressed,  sporting  a  Waterbury  watch, 
collars,  cuffs,  boots,  and  jewelry.  He  takes  with  him  one  or  more 
boxes  *  well  filled  with  clothing,  a  musical  instrument  or  two,  and  per 
fumery  and  other  articles  of  luxury  he  has  learned  to  appreciate." 

For  just  one  moment  we  have  a  seeming  flash  of 
comprehension  of  the  Kanaka's  reason  for  exiling 
himself:  he  goes  away  to  acquire  civilization.  Yes, 
he  was  naked  and  not  ashamed,  now  he  is  clothed 
and  knows  how  to  be  ashamed ;  he  was  unenlight 
ened,  now  he  has  a  Waterbury  watch;  he  was  unre 
fined,  now  he  has  jewelry,  and  something  to  make 
him  smell  good  ;  he  was  a  nobody,  a  provincial,  now 
he  has  been  to  far  countries  and  can  show  off. 

It  all  looks  plausible  — for  a  moment.  Then  the 
missionary  takes  hold  of  this  explanation  and  pulls  it 
to  pieces,  and  dances  on  it,  and  damages  it  beyond 
recognition. 

"Admitting  that  the  foregoing  description  is  the  average  one,  the 
average  sequel  is  this:  The  cuffs  and  collars,  if  used  at  all,  are  carried 
off  by  youngsters,  who  fasten  them  round  the  leg,  just  below  the  knee, 
as  ornaments.  The  Waterbury,  broken  and  dirty,  finds  its  way  to  the 
trader,  who  gives  a  trifle  for  it ;  or  the  inside  is  taken  out,  the  wheels 
strung  on  a  thread  and  hung  around  the  neck.  Knives,  axes,  calico, 
and  handkerchiefs  are  divided  among  friends,  and  there  is  hardly  one 
of  these  apiece.  The  boxes,  the  keys  often  lost  on  the  road  home,  can 
be  bought  for  2s.  6d.  They  are  to  be  seen  rotting  outside  in  almost  any 
shore  village  on  Tanna.  (I  speak  of  what  I  have  seen.)  A  returned 
Kanaka  has  been  furiously  angry  with  me  because  I  would  not  buy  his 

*  "  Box  "  is  English  for  trunk. 


Following  the  Equator  83 

trousers,  which  he  declared  were  just  my  fit.  He  sold  them  afterwards 
to  one  of  my  Aniwan  teachers  for  Qd.  worth  of  tobacco  —  a  pair  of 
trousers  that  probably  cost  him  8s.  or  IDS.  in  Queensland.  A  coat  or 
shirt  is  handy  for  cold  weather.  The  white  handkerchiefs,  the  '  senet ' 
(perfumery),  the  umbrella,  and  perhaps  the  hat,  are  kept.  The  boots 
have  to  take  their  chance,  if  they  do  not  happen  to  fit  the  copra  trader. 
4  Senet '  on  the  hair,  streaks  of  paint  on  the  face,  a  dirty  white  handker 
chief  round  the  neck,  strips  of  turtle  shell  in  the  ears,  a  belt,  a  sheath 
and  knife,  and  an  umbrella  constitute  the  rig  of  the  returned  Kanaka  at 
home  the  day  after  landing." 

r    ] 

A  hat,  an  umbrella,  a  belt,  a  neckerchief.  Other 
wise  stark  naked.  All  in  a  day  the  hard-earned 
11  civilization  "  has  melted  away  to  this.  And  even 
these  perishable  things  must  presently  go.  Indeed, 
there  is  but  a  single  detail  of  his  civilization  that  can 
be  depended  on  to  stay  by  him :  according  to  the 
missionary,  he  has  learned  to  swear.  This  is  art, 
and  art  is  long,  as  the  poet  says. 

In  all  countries  the  laws  throw  light  upon  the  past. 
The  Queensland  law  for  the  regulation  of  the  Labor  fv£^ 
Traffic  is  a  confession.  It  is  a  confession  that  the 
evils  charged  by  the  missionaries  upon  the  traffic 
had  existed  in  the  past,  and  that  they  still  existed 
when  the  law  was  made.  The  missionaries  make  a 
further  charge :  that  the  law  is  evaded  by  the  re 
cruiters,  and  that  the  Government  Agent  sometimes 
helps  them  to  do  it.  Regulation  3 1  reveals  two 
things :  that  sometimes  a  young  fool  of  a  recruit  gets 
his  senses  back,  after  being  persuaded  to  sign  away 
his  liberty  for  three  years,  and  dearly  wants  to  get 
out  of  the  engagement  and  stay  at  home  with  his 
own  people ;  and  that  threats,  intimidation,  and  force 


84  Following  the  Equator 

are  used  to  keep  him  on  board  the  recruiting  ship, 
and  to  hold  him  to  his  contract.  Regulation  3 1  for 
bids  these  coercions.  The  law  requires  that  he  shall 
be  allowed  to  go  free ;  and  another  clause  of  it  re 
quires  the  recruiter  to  set  him  ashore  —  per  boat, 
because  of  the  prevalence  of  sharks.  Testimony 
from  Rev.  Mr.  Gray: 

"There  are  'wrinkles'  for  taking  the  penitent  Kanaka.  My  first 
experience  of  the  Traffic  was  a  case  of  this  kind  in  1884.  A  vessel 
anchored  just  out  of  sight  of  our  station,  word  was  brought  to  me  that 
some  boys  were  stolen,  and  the  relatives  wished  me  to  go  and  get  them 
back.  The  facts  were,  as  I  found,  that  six  boys  had  recruited,  had 
rushed  into  the  boat,  the  Government  Agent  informed  me.  They  had 
all  '  signed ' ;  and,  said  the  Government  Agent,  '  on  board  they  shall 
remain.'  I  was  assured  that  the  six  boys  were  of  age  and  willing  to  go. 
Yet  on  getting  ready  to  leave  the  ship  I  found  four  of  the  lads  ready  to 
come  ashore  in  the  boat !  This  I  forbade.  One  of  them  jumped  into 
the  water  and  persisted  in  coming  ashore  in  my  boat.  When  appealed 
to,  the  Government  Agent  suggested  that  we  go  and  leave  him  to  be 
picked  up  by  the  ship's  boat,  a  quarter  mile  distant  at  the  time  !" 

The  law  and  the  missionaries  feel  for  the  repentant 
recruit  —  and  properly,  one  may  be  permitted  to 
think,  for  he  is  only  a  youth  and  ignorant  and  per 
suadable  to  his  hurt  —  but  sympathy  for  him  is  not 
kept  in  stock  by  the  recruiter.  Rev.  Mr.  Gray 
says : 

"A  captain  many  years  in  the  traffic  explained  to  me  how  a  penitent 
could  be  taken.  «  When  a  boy  jumps  overboard  we  just  take  a  boat 
and  pull  ahead  of  him,  then  lie  between  him  and  the  shore.  If  he  has 
not  tired  himself  swimming,  and  passes  the  boat,  keep  on  heading  him 
in  this  way.  The  dodge  rarely  fails.  The  ooy  generally  tires  of  swim 
ming,  gets  into  the  boat  of  his  own  accord,  and  goes  quietly  on  board.'  " 

Yes,  exhaustion  is  likely  to  make  a  boy  quiet.  If 
the  distressed  boy  had  been  the  speaker's  son,  and 


$V\ 


*&\  i 

Followin    the  Euator  85 


the  captors  savages,  the  speaker  would  have  been  j  , 
surprised  to  see  how  differently  the  thing  looked 
from  the  new  point  of  view,  however,  it  is  not  our 
custom  to  put  ourselves  in  the  other  person's  place. 
Somehow  there  is  something  pathetic  about  that  dis 
appointed  young  savage's  resignation.  I  must  ex 
plain,  here,  that  in  the  traffic  dialect,  "boy"  does 
not  always  mean  boy;  it  means  a  youth  above  six 
teen  years  of  age.  That  is  by  Queensland  law 
the  age  of  consent,  though  it  is  held  that  recruiters 
allow  themselves  some  latitude  in  guessing  at  ages. 
Captain  Wawn  of  the  free  spirit  chafes  under  the 
annoyance  of  "cast-iron  regulations."  They  and 
the  missionaries  have  poisoned  his  life.  He  grieves 
for  the  good  old  days,  vanished  to  come  no  more. 
See  him  weep  ;  hear  him  cuss  between  the  lines  ! 

"  For  a  long  time  we  were  allowed  to  apprehend  and  detain  all 
deserters  who  had  signed  the  agreement  on  board  ship,  but  the  '  cast- 
iron  '  regulations  of  the  Act  of  1884  put  a  stop  to  that,  allowing  the 
Kanaka  to  sign  the  agreement  for  three  years'  service,  travel  about  in 
the  ship  in  receipt  of  the  regular  rations,  cadge  all  he  could,  and  leave 
when  he  thought  fit,  so  long  as  he  did  not  extend  his  pleasure  trip  to 
Queensland." 

Rev.  Mr.  Gray  calls  this  same  restrictive  cast-iron 
law  a  "  farce."  "  There  is  as  much  cruelty  and  in 
justice  done  to  natives  by  acts  that  are  legal  as  by 
deeds  unlawful.  The  regulations  that  exist  are  un 
just  and  inadequate  —  unjust  and  inadequate  they 
must  ever  be."  He  furnishes  his  reasons  for  his 
position,  but  they  are  too  long  for  reproduction 
here. 


86  Following  the  Equator 

However,  if  the  most  a  Kanaka  advantages  himself 
by  a  three-years  course  in  civilization  in  Queensland 
is  a  necklace  and  an  umbrella  and  a  showy  imperfec 
tion  in  the  art  of  swearing,  it  must  be  that  all  the 
profit  of  the  traffic  goes  to  the  white  man.  This 
could  be  twisted  into  a  plausible  argument  that  the 
traffic  ought  to  be  squarely  abolished. 

However,  there  is  reason  for  hope  that  that  can  be 
left  alone  to  achieve  itself.  It  is  claimed  that  the 
traffic  will  depopulate  its  sources  of  supply  within 
the  next  twenty  or  thirty  years.  Queensland  is  a 
very -healthy  place  for  white  people  —  death-rate  12 
in  1,000  of  the  population  —  but  the  Kanaka  death- 
rate  is  away  above  that.  The  vital  statistics  for  1893 
place  it  at  52;  for  1894  (Mackay  district),  68. 
The  first  six  months  of  the  Kanaka's  exile  are  pecu 
liarly  perilous  for  him  because  of  the  rigors  of  the 
new  climate.  The  death-rate  among  the  new  men 
has  reached  as  high  as  180  in  the  1 ,000.  In  the 
Kanaka's  native  home  his  death-rate  is  12  in  time  of 
peace,  and  15  in  time  of  war.  Thus  exile  to  Queens 
land —  with  the  opportunity  to  acquire  civilization, 
an  umbrella,  and  a  pretty  poor  quality  of  profanity 
—  is  twelve  times  as  deadly  for  him  as  war.  Com 
mon  Christian  charity,  common  humanity,  does  seem 
to  require,  not  only  that  these  people  be  returned  to 
their  homes,  but  that  war,  pestilence,  and  famine  be 
introduced  among  them  for  their  preservation. 

Concerning  these  Pacific  isles  and  their  peoples  an 
eloquent  prophet  spoke  long  years  ago  —  five  and 


Following  the  Equator  87 

fifty  years  ago.  In  fact,  he  spoke  a  little  too  early. 
Prophecy  is  a  good  line  of  business,  but  it  is  full  of 
risks.  This  prophet  was  the  Right  Rev.  M.  Russell, 
LL.D.,  D.C.L.,  of  Edinburgh: 

"  Is  the  tide  of  civilization  to  roll  only  to  the  foot  of  the  Rocky 
Mountains,  and  is  the  sun  of  knowledge  to  set  at  last  in  the  waves  of 
the  Pacific?  No;  the  mighty  day  of  four  thousand  years  is  drawing  to 
its  close;  the  sun  of  humanity  has  performed  its  destined  course;  but 
long  ere  its  setting  rays  are  extinguished  in  the  west,  its  ascending 
beams  have  glittered  on  the  isles  of  the  eastern  seas.  .  .  .  And 
now  we  see  the  race  of  Japhet  setting  forth  to  people  the  isles,  and  the 
seeds  of  another  Europe  and  a  second  England  sown  in  the  region  of 
the  sun.  But  mark  the  words  of  the  prophecy:  'He  shall  dwell  in 
the  tents  of  Sheni,  and  Canaan  shall  be  his  servant.'  It  is  not  said 
Canaan  shall  be  his  slave.  To  the  Anglo-Saxon  race  is  given  the 
scepter  of  the  globe,  but  there  is  not  given  either  the  lash  of  the  slave- 
driver  or  the  rack  of  the  executioner.  The  East  will  not  be  stained 
with  the  same  atrocities  as  the  West;  the  frightful  gangrene  of  an 
enthralled  race  is  not  to  mar  the  destinies  of  the  family  of  Japhet  in  the 
Oriental  world;  humanizing,  not  destroying,  as  they  advance;  uniting 
with,  not  enslaving,  the  inhabitants  with  whom  they  dwell,  the  British 
race  may,"  etc.,  etc. 

And  he  closes  his  vision  with  an  invocation  from 
Campbell : 

"  Come,  bright  Improvement !  on  the  car  of  Time, 
And  rule  the  spacious  world  from  clirne  to  clime." 

Very  well,  Bright  Improvement  has  arrived,  you 
see,  with  her  civilization,  and  her  Waterbury,  and 
her  umbrella,  and  her  third-quality  profanity,  and 
her  humanizing-not-destroying  machinery,  and  her 
hundred-and-eighty-death-rate,  and  everything  is 
going  along  just  as  handsome  ! 

But  the  prophet  that  speaks  last  has  an  advantage 


u-i 


^        l>vVl'iCw/ 

- 

88  Following  the  Equator 

over  the   pioneer  in  the  business.     Rev.  Mr.  Gray 
says : 

"  What  I  am  concerned  about  is  that  we  as  a  Christian  nation  should 
wipe  out  these  races  to  enrich  ourselves." 

And  he  closes  his  pamphlet  with  a  grim  Indictment 
which  is  as  eloquent  in  its  flowerless  straightforward 
English  as  is  the  hand-painted  rhapsody  of  the  early 
prophet: 

"  My  indictment  of  the  Queensland  Kanaka  Labor  Traffic  is  this: 

"I.  It  generally  demoralizes  and  always  impoverishes  the  Kanaka, 
deprives  him  of  his  citizenship,  and  depopulates  the  islands  fitted  to  his 
home. 

"2.  It  is  felt  to  lower  the  dignity  of  the  white  agricultural  Jaborei 
in  Queensland,  and  beyond  a  doubt  it  lowers  his  wages  there. 

"  3.  The  whole  system  is  fraught  with  danger  to  Australia  and  the 
islands  on  the  score  of  health. 

"4.  On  social  and  political  grounds  the  continuance  of  the  Queens 
land  Kanaka  Labor  Traffic  must  be  a  barrier  to  the  true  federation  of 
the  Australian  colonies. 

"5.  The  Regulations  under  which  the  Traffic  exists  in  Queensland 
are  inadequate  to  prevent  abuses,  and  in  the  nature  of  things  they  must 
remain  so. 

"  6.  The  whole  system  is  contrary  tc  the  spirit  and  doctrine  of  the 
Gospel  of  Jesus  Christ.  The  Gospel  requires  us  to  help  the  weak,  but 
the  Kanaka  is  fleeced  and  trodden  down. 

"  7.  The  bed-rock  of  this  Traffic  is  that  the  life  and  liberty  of  a 
black  man  are  of  less  value  than  those  of  a  white  man.  And  a  Traffic 
that  has  grown  out  of  '  slave-hunting '  will  certainly  remain  to  the  end 
not  unlike  its  origin." 


X. 


r  yj" 


»*•» 


^ 


CHAPTER   VII. 

Truth  is  the  most  valuable  thing  we  have.    Let  us  economize  it. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

rROM  DIARY: — For  a  day  or  two  we  have  been 
plowing  among  an  invisible  vast  wilderness  of 
islands,  catching  now  and  then  a  shadowy  glimpse 
of  a  member  of  it.  There  does  seem  to  be  a  pro 
digious  lot  of  islands  this  year;  the  map  of  this 
region  is  freckled  and  fly-specked  all  over  with  them. 
Their  number  would  seem  to  be  uncountable.  We 
are  moving  among  the  Fijis  now  —  224  islands  and 
islets  in  the  group.  In  front  of  us,  to  the  west,  the 
wilderness  stretches  toward  Australia,  then  curves 
upward  tp  New  Guinea,  and  still  up  and  up  to  Japan ; 
behind  tiSj  to  the  east,  the  wilderness  stretches  sixty 
degrees  across  the  wastes  of  the  Pacific ;  south  of  us 
is  New  Zealand.  Somewhere  or  other  among  these 
myriads  Samoa  is  concealed,  and  not  discoverable  on 
the  map.  Still,  if  you  wish  to  go  there,  you  will 
have  no  trouble  about  finding  it  if  you  follow  the 
directions  given  by  Robert  Louis  Stevenson  to  Dr. 
Conan  Doyle  and  to  Mr.  J.  M.  Barrie.  "  You  go 

(89) 


90  Following  the  Equator 

to  America,  cross  the  continent  to  San  Francisco, 
and  then  it's  the  second  turning  to  the  left."  To 
get  the  full  flavor  of  the  joke  one  must  take  a  glance 
at  the  map. 

Wednesday,  September  n. —  Yesterday  we  passed 
close  to  an  island  or  so,  and  recognized  the  pub 
lished  Fiji  characteristics :  a  broad  belt  of  clean  white 
coral  sand  around  the  island ;  back  of  it  a  graceful 
fringe  of  leaning  palms,  with  native  huts  nestling 
cosily  among  the  shrubbery  at  their  bases ;  back  of 
these  a  stretch  of  level  land  clothed  in  tropic  vegeta 
tion  ;  back  of  that,  rugged  and  picturesque  moun 
tains.  A  detail  of  the  immediate  foreground :  a 
mouldering  ship  perched  high  up  on  a  reef-bench. 

This  completes  the  composition,  and  makes  the 
picture  artistically  perfect. 

In  the  afternoon  we  sighted  Suva,  the  capital  of 
the  group,  and  threaded  our  way  into  the  secluded 
little  harbor  —  a  placid  basin  of  brilliant  blue  and 
green  water  tucked  snugly  in  among  the  sheltering 
hills.  A  few  ships  rode  at  anchor  in  it  —  one  of 
them  a  sailing  vessel  flying  the  American  flag;  and 
they  said  she  came  from  Duluth !  There's  a  jour 
ney  !  Duluth  is  several  thousand  miles  from  the 
sea,  and  yet  she  is  entitled  to  the  proud  name  of 
Mistress  of  the  Commercial  Marine  of  the  United 
States  of  America.  There  is  only  one  free,  inde 
pendent,  unsubsidized  American  ship  sailing  the 
foreign  seas,  and  Duluth  owns  it.  All  by  itself  that 
ship  is  the  American  fleet.  All  by  itself  it  causes 


Following  the  Equator  91 

the  American  name  and  power  to  be  respected  in 
the  far  regions  of  the  globe.  All  by  itself  it  certifies 
to  the  world  that  the  most  populous  civilized  nation 
in  the  earth  has  a  just  pride  in  her  stupendous  stretch 
of  sea-front,  and  is  determined  to  assert  and  main 
tain  her  rightful  place  as  one  of  the  Great  Maritime 
Powers  of  the  Planet.  All  by  itself  it  is  making 
foreign  eyes  familiar  with  a  Flag  which  they  have  not 
seen  before  for  forty  years,  outside  of  the  museum. 
For  what  Duluth  has  done,  in  building,  equipping, 
and  maintaining  at  her  sole  expense  the  American 
Foreign  Commercial  Fleet,  and  in  thus  rescuing  the 
American  name  from  shame  and  lifting  it  high  for 
the  homage  of  the  nations,  we  owe  her  a  debt  of 
gratitude  which  our  hearts  shall  confess  with  quick- 
ened  beats  whenever  her  name  is  named  henceforth. 
Many  national  toasts  will  die  in  the  lapse  of  time, 
but  while  the  flag  flies  and  the  Republic  survives, 
they  who  live  under  their  shelter  will  still  drink  this 
one,  standing  and  uncovered :  Health  and  pros 
perity  to  Thee,  O  Duluth,  American  Queen  of  the 
Alien  Seas ! 

Rowboats  began  to  flock  from  the  shore ;  their 
crews  were  the  first  natives  we  had  seen.  These 
men  carried  no  overplus  of  clothing,  and  this  was 
wise,  for  the  weather  was  hot.  Handsome,  great 
dusky  men  they  were,  muscular,  clean-limbed,  and 
with  faces  full  of  character  and  intelligence.  It 
would  be  hard  to  find  their  superiors  anywhere 
among  the  dark  races,  I  should  think. 


92  Following  the  Equator 

Everybody  went  ashore  to  look  around,  and  spy 
out  the  land,  and  have  that  luxury  of  luxuries  to  sea- 
voyagers  —  a  land-dinner.  And  there  we  saw  more 
natives:  Wrinkled  old  women,  with  their  flat  mam 
mals  flung  over  their  shoulders,  or  hanging  down  in 
front  like  the  cold-weather  drip  from  the  molasses 
faucet;  plump  and  smily  young  girls,  blithe  and 
content,  easy  and  graceful,  a  pleasure  to  look  at; 
young  matrons,  tall,  straight,  comely,  nobly  built, 
sweeping  by  with  chin  up,  and  a  gait  incomparable 
for  unconscious  stateliness  and  dignity;  majestic 
young  men  —  athletes  for  build  and  muscle  —  clothed 
in  a  loose  arrangement  of  dazzling  white,  with  bronze 
breast  and  bronze  legs  naked,  and  the  head  a  can 
non-swab  of  solid  hair  combed  straight  out  from 
the  skull  and  dyed  a  rich  brick-red.  Only  sixty 
years  ago  they  were  sunk  in  darkness;  now  they 
have  the  bicycle. 

We  strolled  about  the  streets  of  the  white  folks' 
little  town,  and  around  over  the  hills  by  paths  and 
roads  among  European  dwellings  and  gardens  and 
plantations,  and  past  clumps  of  hibiscus  that  made  a 
body  blink,  the  great  blossoms  were  so  intensely  red  ; 
and  by  and  by  we  stopped  to  ask  an  elderly  English 
colonist  a  question  or  two,  and  to  sympathize  with 
him  concerning  the  torrid  weather;  but  he  was  sur 
prised,  and  said : 

"  This?  This  is  not  hot.  You  ought  to  be  here 
in  the  summer  time  once." 

"  We  supposed  that  this  was  summer;  it  has  the 


Following  the  Equator  93 

earmarks  of  it.  You  could  take  it  to  almost  any 
country  and  deceive  people  with  it.  But  if  it  isn't 
summer,  what  does  it  lack?  " 

"  It  lacks  half  a  year.     This  is  mid-winter. " 

I  had  been  suffering  from  colds  for  several  months, 
and  a  sudden  change  of  season,  like  this,  could 
hardly  fail  to  do  me  hurt.  It  brought  on  another 
cold.  It  is  odd,  these  sudden  jumps  from  season  to 
season.  A  fortnight  ago  we  left  America  in  mid 
summer,  now  it  is  mid-winter ;  about  a  week  hence 
we  shall  arrive  in  Australia  in  the  spring. 

After  dinner  I  found  in  the  billiard-room  a  resident 
whom  I  had  known  somewhere  else  in  the  world,  and 
presently  made  some  new  friends  and  drove  with 
them  out  into  the  country  to  visit  His  Excellency  the 
head  of  the  State,  who  was  occupying  his  country 
residence,  to  escape  the  rigors  of  the  winter  weather, 
I  suppose,  for  it  was  on  breezy  high  ground  and 
much  more  comfortable  than  the  lower  regions, 
where  the  town  is,  and  where  the  winter  has  full 
swing,  and  often  sets  a  person's  hair  afire  when  he 
takes  off  his  hat  to  bow.  There  is  a  noble  and 
beautiful  view  of  ocean  and  islands  and  castellated 
peaks  from  the  governor's  high-placed  house,  and 
its  immediate  surroundings  lie  drowsing  in  that 
dreamy  repose  and  serenity  which  are  the  charm  of 
life  in  the  Pacific  Islands. 

One  of  the  new  friends  who  went  out  there  with 
me  was  a  large  man,  and  I  had  been  admiring  his 

size  all  the  way.     I  was  still  admiring  :t  as  he  stood 
7* 


94  Following  the  Equator 

by  the  governor  on  the  veranda,  talking;  then  the 
Fijian  butler  stepped  out  there  to  announce  tea,  and 
dwarfed  him.  Maybe  he  did  not  quite  dwarf  him, 
but  at  any  rate  the  contrast  was  quite  striking.  Per 
haps  that  dark  giant  was  a  king  in  a  condition  of 
political  suspension.  I  think  that  in  the  talk  there 
on  the  veranda  it  was  said  that  in  Fiji,  as  in  the 
Sandwich  Islands,  native  kings  and  chiefs  are  of 
much  grander  size  and  build  than  the  commoners. 
This  man  was  clothed  in  flowing  white  vestments, 
and  they  were  just  the  thing  for  him ;  they  com 
ported  well  with  his  great  stature  and  his  kingly  port 
and  dignity.  European  clothes  would  have  degraded 
him  and  made  him  commonplace.  I  know  that,  be 
cause  they  do  that  with  everybody  that  wears  them. 
It  was  said  that  the  old-time  devotion  to  chiefs 
and  reverence  for  their  persons  still  survive  in  the 
native  commoner,  and  in  great  force.  The  educated 
young  gentleman  who  is  chief  of  the  tribe  that  live  in 
the  region  about  the  capital  dresses  in  the  fashion  of 
high-class  European  gentlemen,  but  even  his  clothes 
cannot  damn  him  in  the  reverence  of  his  people 
Their  pride  in  his  lofty  rank  and  ancient  lineage  lives 
on,  in  spite  of  his  lost  authority  and  the  evil  magic 
of  his  tailor.  He  has  no  need  to  defile  himself  with 
work,  or  trouble  his  heart  with  the  sordid  cares  of 
life ;  the  tribe  will  see  to  it  that  he  shall  not  want, 
and  that  he  shall  hold  up  his  head  and  live  like  a 
gentleman.  I  had  a  glimpse  of  him  down  in  the 
town.  Perhaps  he  is  a  descendant  of  the  last  king 


Following  the  Equator  95 

the  king  with  the  difficult  name  whose  memory  is 
preserved  by  a  notable  monument  of  cut  stone  which 
one  sees  in  the  enclosure  in  the  middle  of  the  town. 
Thakombau  —  I  remember,  now;  that  is  the  name. 
It  is  easier  to  preserve  it  on  a  granite  block  than  in 
your  head. 

Fiji  was  ceded  to  England  by  this  king  in  1858. 
One  of  the  gentlemen  present  at  the  governor's 
quoted  a  remark  made  by  the  king  at  the  time  of 
the  session  —  a  neat  retort,  and  with  a  touch  of 
pathos  in  it,  too.  The  English  Commissioner  had 
offered  a  crumb  of  comfort  to  Thakombau  by  saying 
that  the  transfer  of  the  kingdom  to  Great  Britain  was 
merely  "  a  sort  of  hermit-crab  formality,  you  know." 
"  Yes,"  said  poor  Thakombau,  "  but  with  this  differ 
ence —  the  crab  moves  into  an  unoccupied  shell,  but 
mine  isn't." 

However,  as  far  as  I  can  make  out  from  the  books, 
the  King  was  between  the  devil  and  the  deep  sea  at 
the  time,  and  hadn't  much  choice.  He  owed  the 
United  States  a  large  debt  —  a  debt  which  he  could 
pay  if  allowed  time,  but  time  was  denied  him.  He 
must  pay  up  right  away  or  the  war-ships  would  be 
upon  him.  To  protect  his  people  from  this  disaster 
he  ceded  his  country  to  Britain,  with  a  clause  in  the 
contract  providing  for  the  ultimate  payment  of  the 
American  debt. 

In  old  times  the  Fijians  were  fierce  fighters ;  they 
were  very  religious,  and  worshiped  idols;  the  big 
chiefs  were  proud  and  haughty,  and  they  were  men 


96  Following  the  Equator 

of  great  style  in  many  ways ;  all  chiefs  had  several 
wives,  the  biggest  chiefs  sometimes  had  as  many  as 
fifty;  when  a  chief  was  dead  and  ready  for  burial, 
four  or  five  of  his  wives  were  strangled  and  put  into 
the  grave  with  him.  In  1804  twenty-seven  British 
convicts  escaped  from  Australia  to  Fiji,  and  brought 
guns  and  ammunition  with  them.  Consider  what  a 
power  they  were,  armed  like  that,  and  what  an  op 
portunity  they  had.  If  they  had  been  energetic 
men  and  sober,  and  had  had  brains  and  known  how 
to  use  them,  they  could  have  achieved  the  sov 
ereignty  of  the  archipelago  —  twenty-seven  kings 
and  each  with  eight  or  nine  islands  under  his  scepter. 
But  nothing  came  of  this  chance.  They  lived  worth 
less  lives  of  sin  and  luxury,  and  died  without  honor 
—  in  most  cases  by  violence.  Only  one  of  them  had 
any  ambition ;  he  was  an  Irishman  named  Connor. 
He  tried  to  raise  a  family  of  fifty  children,  and 
scored  forty-eight.  He  died  lamenting  his  failure. 
It  was  a  foolish  sort  of  avarice.  Many  a  father 
would  have  been  rich  enough  with  forty. 

It  is  a  fine  race,  the  Fijians,  with  brains  in  their 
heads  and  an  inquiring  turn  of  mind.  It  appears 
that  their  savage  ancestors  had  a  doctrine  of  immor 
tality  in  their  scheme  of  religion  —  with  limitations. 
That  is  to  say,  their  dead  friend  would  go  to  a  happy 
hereafter  if  he  could  be  accumulated,  but  not  other 
wise.  They  drew  the  line;  they  thought  that  the 
missionary's  doctrine  was  too  sweeping,  too  compre 
hensive.  They  called  his  attention  to  certain  facts. 


Following  the  Equator  97 

For  instance,  many  of  their  friends  had  been  de 
voured  by  sharks;  the  sharks,  in  their  turn,  were 
caught  and  eaten  by  other  men ;  later,  these  men 
were  captured  in  war,  and  eaten  by  the  enemy.  The 
original  persons  had  entered  into  the  composition  of 
the  sharks ;  next,  they  and  the  sharks  had  become 
part  of  the  flesh  and  blood  and  bone  of  the  can 
nibals.  How,  then,  could  the  particles  of  the 
original  men  be  searched  out  from  the  final  con 
glomerate  and  put  together  again?  The  inquirers 
were  full  of  doubts,  and  considered  that  the  mission 
ary  had  not  examined  the  matter  with  the  gravity 
and  attention  which  so  serious  a  thing  deserved. 

The  missionary  taught  these  exacting  savages 
many  valuable  things,  and  got  from  them  one  —  a 
very  dainty  and  poetical  idea:  Those  wild  and 
ignorant  poor  children  of  Nature  believed  that  the 
flowers,  after  they  perish,  rise  on  the  winds  and 
float  away  to  the  fair  fields  of  heaven,  and  flourish 
there  forever  in  immortal  beauty ! 


S 


frr< 

^     A1"        !     > 


^  y\ 

^/^/^\ 

CHAPTER  VIII. 


It  could  prct>ably  be  shown  by  fafts  and  figures  that  there  is  no  distinctly 
Dative  Arfierican  criminal  class  except  Congress. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WHEN  one  glances  at  the  map  the  members  of 
the  stupendous  island  wilderness  of  the  Pacific 
seem  to  crowd  upon  each  other;  but  no,  there  is  no 
crowding,  even  in  the  center  of  a  group;  and  be 
tween  groups  there  are  lonely  wide  deserts  of  sea. 
Not  everything  is  known  about  the  islands,  their 
peoples  and  their  languages.  A  startling  reminder 
of  this  is  furnished  by  the  fact  that  in  Fiji,  twenty 
years  ago,  were  living  two  strange  and  solitary 
beings  who  came  from  an  unknown  country  and 
spoke  an  unknown  language.  "They  were  picked 
up  by  a  passing  vessel  many  hundreds  of  miles  from 
any  known  land,  floating  in  the  same  tiny  canoe  in 
which  they  had  been  blown  out  to  sea.  When 
found  they  were  but  skin  and  bone.  No  one  could 
understand  what  they  said,  and  they  have  never 
named  their  country;  or,  if  they  have,  the  name 
does  not  correspond  with  that  of  any  island  on  any 
chart.  They  are  now  fat  and  sleek,  and  as  happy 
as  the  day  is  long.  In  the  ship's  log  there  is  an 

(98) 


Following  the  Equator  99 

entry  of  the  latitude  and  longitude  in  which  they 
were  found,  and  this  is  probably  all  the  clew  they 
will  ever  have  to  their  lost  homes."* 

What  a  strange  and  romantic  episode  it  is ;  and 
how  one  is  tortured  with  curiosity  to  know  whence 
those  mysterious  creatures  came,  those  Men  Without 
a  Country,  errant  waifs  who  cannot  name  their  lost 
home,  wandering  Children  of  Nowhere. 

Indeed,  the  Island  Wilderness  is  the  very  home  of 
romance  and  dreams  and  mystery.  The  loneliness, 
the  solemnity,  the  beauty,  and  the  deep  repose  of 
this  wilderness  have  a  charm  which  is  all  their  own 
for  the  bruised  spirit  of  men  who  have  fought  and 
failed  in  the  struggle  for  life  in  the  great  world ;  and 
for  men  who  have  been  hunted  out  of  the  great 
world  for  crime ;  and  for  other  men  who  love  an 
easy  and  indolent  existence;  and  for  others  who 
love  a  roving  free  life,  and  stir  and  change  and  ad 
venture  ;  and  for  yet  others  who  love  an  easy  and 
comfortable  career  of  trading  and  money-getting, 
mixed  with  plenty  of  loose  matrimony  by  purchase, 
divorce  without  trial  or  expense,  and  limitless  spree- 
ing  thrown  in  to  make  life  ideally  perfect. 

We  sailed  again,  refreshed. 

The  most  cultivated  person  in  the  ship  was  a 
young  Englishman  whose  home  was  in  New  Zealand. 
He  was  a  naturalist.  His  learning  in  his  specialty 
was  deep  and  thorough,  his  interest  in  his  subject 
amounted  to  a  passion,  he  had  an  easy  gift  of 

*  Forbes's  "  Two  Years  in  Fiji." 
0* 


100  Following  the  Equator 

speech;  and  so,  when  he  talked  about  animals  it 
was  a  pleasure  to  listen  to  him.  And  profitable, 
too,  though  he  was  sometimes  difficult  to  understand 
because  now  and  then  he  used  scientific  technicalities 
which  were  above  the  reach  of  some  of  us.  They 
were  pretty  sure  to  be  above  my  reach,  but  as  he 
was  quite  willing  to  explain  them  I  always  made  it  a 
point  to  get  him  to  do  it.  I  had  a  fair  knowledge 
of  his  subject  —  layman's  knowledge  —  to  begin 
with,  but  it  was  his  teachings  which  crystallized  it 
into  scientific  form  and  clarity  —  in  a  word,  gave  it 
value. 

His  special  interest  was  the  fauna  of  Australasia, 
and  his  knowledge  of  the  matter  was  as  exhaustive 
as  it  was  accurate.  I  already  knew  a  good  deal 
about  the  rabbits  in  Australasia  and  their  marvelous 
fecundity,  but  in  my  talks  with  him  I  found  that  my 
estimate  of  the  great  hindrance  and  obstruction  in 
flicted  by  the  rabbit  pest  upon  traffic  and  travel  was 
far  short  of  the  facts.  He  told  me  that  the  first  pair 
of  rabbits  imported  into  Australasia  bred  so  wonder 
fully  that  within  six  months  rabbits  were  so  thick  in 
the  land  that  people  had  to  dig  trenches  through 
them  to  get  from  town  to  town. 

He  told  me  a  great  deal  about  worms,  and  the 
kangaroo,  and  other  coleoptera,  and  said  he  knew 
the  history  and  ways  of  all  such  pachydermata.  He 
said  the  kangaroo  had  pockets,  and  carried  its  young 
in  them  when  it  couldn't  get  apples.  And  he  said 
that  the  emu  was  as  big  as  an  ostrich,  and  looked 


Following  the  Equator  101 

like  one,  and  had  an  amorphous  appetite  and  would 
eat  bricks.  Also,  that  the  dingo  was  not  a  dingo  at 
all,  but  just  a  wild  dog;  and  that  the  only  difference 
between  a  dingo  and  a  dodo  was  that  neither  of 
them  barked ;  otherwise  they  were  just  the  same. 

He  said  that  the  only  game-bird  in  Australasia 
was  the  wombat,  and  the  only  song-bird  the  larrikin, 
and  that  both  were  protected  by  government.  The 
most  beautiful  of  the  native  birds  was  the  bird  of 
Paradise.  Next  came  the  two  kinds  of  lyres;  not 
spelt  the  same.  He  said  the  one  kind  was  dying 
out,  the  other  thickening  up.  He  explained  that 
the  "Sundowner"  was  not  a  bird,  it  was  a  man; 
sundowner  was  merely  the  Australian  equivalent  of 
our  \vord,  tramp.  He  is  a  loafer,  a  hard  drinker, 
and  a  sponge.  He  tramps  across  the  country  in  the 
sheep-shearing  season,  pretending  to  look  for  work; 
but  he  always  times  himself  to  arrive  at  a  sheep-run 
just  at  sundown,  when  the  day's  labor  ends;  all  he 
wants  is  whisky  and  supper  and  bed  and  breakfast ; 
he  gets  them  and  then  disappears.  The  naturalist 
spoke  of  the  bell  bird,  the  creature  that  at  short 
intervals  all  day  rings  out  its  mellow  and  exquisite 
peal  from  the  deeps  of  the  forest.  It  is  the  favorite 
and  best  friend  of  the  weary  and  thirsty  sundowner ; 
for  he  knows  that  wrherever  the  bell  bird  is,  there  is 
water;  and  he  goes  somewhere  else.  The  naturalist 
said  that  the  oddest  bird  in  Australasia  was  the 
Laughing  Jackass,  and  the  biggest  the  now  extinct 
Great  Moa. 


102  Fallowing  the  Equator 

The  Moa  stood  thirteen  feet  high,  and  could  step 
over  an  ordinary  man's  head  or  kick  his  hat  off; 
and  his  head,  too,  for  that  matter.  He  said  it  was 
wingless,  but  a  swrift  runner.  The  natives  used  to 
ride  it.  It  could  make  forty  miles  an  hour,  and 
keep  it  up  for  four  hundred  miles  and  come  out 
reasonably  fresh.  It  was  still  in  existence  when  the 
railway  was  introduced  into  New  Zealand ;  still  in 
existence,  and  carrying  the  mails.  The  railroad 
began  with  the  same  schedule  it  has  now:  two  ex 
presses  a  week  —  time,  twenty  miles  an  hour.  The 
company  exterminated  the  Moa  to  get  the  mails. 

Speaking  of  the  indigenous  coneys  and  bactrian 
camels,  the  naturalist  said  that  the  coniferous  and 
bacteriological  output  of  Australasia  was  remarkable 
for  its  many  and  curious  departures  from  the  ac 
cepted  laws  governing  these  species  of  tubercles,  but 
that  in  his  opinion  Nature's  fondness  for  dabbling 
in  the  erratic  was  most  notably  exhibited  in  that 
curious  combination  of  bird,  fish,  amphibian,  bur- 
rower,  crawler,  quadruped,  and  Christian  called  the 
Ornithorhyncus  —  grotesquest  of  animals,  king  of 
the  animalculae  of  the  world  for  versatility  of  char 
acter  and  make-up.  Said  he: 

"You  can  call  it  anything  you  want  to,  and  be  right.  It  is  a  fish, 
for  it  lives  in  the  river  half  the  time  ;  it  is  a  land  animal,  for  it  resides 
on  the  land  half  the  time  ;  it  is  an  amphibian,  since  it  likes  both  and 
does  not  know  which  it  prefers ;  it  is  a  hybernian,  for  when  times  are 
dull  and  nothing  much  going  on  it  buries  itself  under  the  mud  at  the 
bottom  of  a  puddle  and  hybernates  there  a  couple  of  weeks  at  a  time  ; 
it  is  a  kind  of  duck,  for  it  has  a  duck-bill  and  four  webbed  paddles ;  it 


Following  the  Equator  103 

Is  a  fish  and  quadruped  together,  for  in  the  water  it  swims  with  the 
paddles  and  on  shore  it  paws  itself  across  country  with  them ;  it  is  a 
kind  of  seal,  for  it  has  a  seal's  fur ;  it  is  carnivorous,  herbivorous, 
insectivorous,  and  vermifuginous,  for  it  eats  fish  and  grass  and  butter 
flies,  and  in  the  season  digs  worms  out  of  the  mud  and  devours  them ; 
it  is  clearly  a  bird,  for  it  lays  eggs  and  hatches  them  ;  it  is  clearly  a 
mammal,  for  it  nurses  its  young  ;  and  it  is  manifestly  a  kind  of  Christian, 
for  it  keeps  the  Sabbath  when  there  is  anybody  around,  and  when  there 
isn't,  doesn't.  It  has  all  the  tastes  there  are  except  refined  ones,  it  has 
all  the  habits  there  are  except  good  ones. 

"It  is  a  survival — a  survival  of  the  fittest.  Mr.  Darwin  invented 
the  theory  that  goes  by  that  name,  but  the  Ornithorhyncus  was  the  first 
to  put  it  to  actual  experiment  and  prove  that  it  could  be  done.  Hence 
it  should  have  as  much  of  the  credit  as  Mr.  Darwin.  It  was  never  in 
the  Ark  ;  you  will  find  no  mention  of  it  there  ;  it  nobly  stayed  out  and 
worked  the  theory.  Of  all  creatures  in  the  world  it  was  the  only  one 
properly  equipped  for  the  test.  The  Ark  was  thirteen  months  afloat, 
and  all  the  globe  submerged  ;  no  land  visible  above  the  flood,  no  vege 
tation,  no  food  for  a  mammal  to  eat,  nor  water  for  a  mammal  to  drink  ; 
for  all  mammal  food  was  destroyed,  and  when  the  pure  floods  from 
heaven  and  the  salt  oceans  of  the  earth  mingled  their  waters  and  rose 
above  the  mountain  tops,  the  result  was  a  drink  which  no  bird  or  beast 
of  ordinary  construction  could  use  and  live.  But  this  combination  was 
nuts  for  the  Ornithorhyncus,  if  I  may  use  a  term  like  that  without  offense. 
Its  river  home  had  always  been  salted  by  the  flood  tides  of  the  sea.  On 
the  face  of  the  Noachian  deluge  innumerable  forest  trees  were  floating. 
Upon  these  the  Ornithorhyncus  voyaged  in  peace  ;  voyaged  from  clime  to 
clime,  from  hemisphere  to  hemisphere,  in  contentment  and  comfort,  in 
virile  interest  in  the  constant  change  of  scene,  in  humble  thankfulness 
for  its  privileges,  in  ever-increasing  enthusiasm  in  the  development  of 
the  great  theory  upon  whose  validity  it  had  staked  its  life,  its  fortunes, 
and  its  sacred  honor,  if  I  may  use  such  expressions  without  impropriety 
in  connection  with  an  episode  of  this  nature. 

"  It  lived  the  tranquil  and  luxurious  life  of  a  creature  of  independent 
means.  Of  things  actually  necessary  to  its  existence  and  its  happiness 
not  a  detail  was  wanting.  When  it  wished  to  walk,  it  scrambled  along 
the  tree-trunk ;  it  mused  in  the  shade  of  the  leaves  by  day,  it  slept  in 
their  shelter  by  night ;  when  it  wanted  the  refreshment  of  a  swim,  it  had 
it ;  it  ate  leaves  when  it  wanted  a  vegetable  diet,  it  dug  under  the  bark 


104  Following  the  Equator 

for  worms  and  grubs ;  when  it  wanted  fish  it  caught  them,  when  it 
wanted  eggs  it  laid  them.  If  the  grubs  gave  out  in  one  tree  it  swam  to 
another ;  and  as  for  fish,  the  very  opulence  of  the  supply  was  an  embar 
rassment.  And  finally,  when  it  was  thirsty  it  smacked  its  chops  in 
gratitude  over  a  blend  that  would  have  slain  a  crocodile. 

"  When  at  last,  after  thirteen  months  of  travel  and  research  in  all  the 
Zones,  it  went  aground  on  a  mountain-summit,  it  strode  ashore,  saying 
in  its  heart,  '  Let  them  that  come  after  me  invent  theories  and  dream 
dreams  about  the  Survival  of  the  Fittest  if  they  like,  but  I  am  the  first 
that  has  done  it ! ' 

"  This  wonderful  creature  dates  back,  like  the  kangaroo  and  many 
other  Australian  hydrocephalous  invertebrates,  to  an  age  long  anterior 
to  the  advent  of  man  upon  the  earth  ;  they  date  back,  indeed,  to  a  time 
when  a  causeway,  hundreds  of  miles  wide  and  thousands  of  miles  long, 
joined  Australia  to  Africa,  and  the  animals  of  the  two  countries  were 
alike,  and  all  belonged  to  that  remote  geological  epoch  known  to  science 
as  the  Old  Red  Grindstone  Post-Pleosaurian.  Later  the  causeway  sank 
under  the  sea ;  subterranean  convulsions  lifted  the  African  continent  a 
thousand  feet  higher  than  it  was  before,  but  Australia  kept  her  old  level. 
In  Africa's  new  climate  the  animals  necessarily  began  to  develop  and 
shade  off  into  new  forms  and  families  and  species,  but  the  animals  of 
Australia  as  necessarily  remained  stationary,  and  have  so  remained  until 
this  day.  In  the  course  of  some  millions  of  years  the  African  Ornitho 
rhyncus  developed  and  developed  and  developed,  and  sloughed  off  detail 
after  detail  of  its  make-up  until  at  last  the  creature  became  wholly  dis 
integrated  and  scattered.  Whenever  you  see  a  bird  or  a  beast  or  a  seal 
or  an  otter  in  Africa  you  know  that  he  is  merely  a  sorry  surviving  frag 
ment  of  that  sublime  original  of  whom  I  have  been  speaking  —  that 
creature  which  was  everything  in  general  and  nothing  in  particular  — 
the  opulently  endowed  e  pluribus  unum  of  the  animal  world. 

"  Such  is  the  history  of  the  most  hoary,  the  most  ancient,  the  most 
venerable  creature  that  exists  in  the  earth  to-day  —  Ornithorhyncus 
Platypiis  Extraordinariensis  —  whom  God  preserve  !  ' ' 

When  he  was  strongly  moved  he  could  rise  and 
soar  like  that  with  ease.  And  not  only  in  the  prose 
form,  but  in  'the  poetical  as  well.  He  had  written 
many  pieces  of  poetry  in  his  time,  and  these  manu- 


Following  the  Equator  105 

scripts  he  lent  around  among  the  passengers,  and 
was  willing  to  let  them  be  copied.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  the  least  techincal  one  in  the  series,  and  the 
one  which  reached  the  loftiest  note,  perhaps,  was  his 

INVOCATION 

"  Come  forth  from  thy  oozy  couch, 

O  Ornithorhyncus  dear ! 
And  greet  with  a  cordial  claw 
The  stranger  that  longs  to  hear 

"  From  thy  own  lips  the  tale 

Of  thy  origin  all  unknown: 
Thy  misplaced  bone  where  flesh  should  be 
And  flesh  where  should  be  bone; 

"  And  fishy  fin  where  should  be  paw, 

And  beaver-trowel  tail, 
And  snout  of  beast  equip'd  with  leeth 
Where  gills  ought  to  prevail. 

"Come,  Kangaroo,  the  good  and  true! 

Foreshortened  as  to  legs, 
And  body  tapered  like  a  churn, 
And  sack  marsupial,  i'  fegs, 

"  And  tell  us  why  you  linger  here, 
Thou  relic  of  a  vanished  time, 
When  all  your  friends  as  fossils  sleep, 
Immortalized  in  lime  !  " 

Perhaps  no  poet  is  a  conscious  plagiarist;  but 
th^re  seems  to  be  warrant  for  suspecting  that  there 
is  no  poet  who  is  not  at  one  time  or  another  an 
unconscious  one.  The  above  verses  are  indeed 
beautiful,  and,  in  a  way,  touching;  but  there  is  a 
haunting  something  about  them  which  unavoidably 
suggests  the  Sweet  Singer  of  Michigan.  It  can 


106  Following  the  Equator 

hardly  be  doubted  that  the  author  had  read  the 
works  of  that  poet  and  been  impressed  by  them.  It 
is  not  apparent  that  he  has  borrowed  from  them  any 
word  or  yet  any  phrase,  but  the  style  and  swing  and 
mastery  and  melody  of  the  Sweet  Singer  all  are 
there.  Compare  this  Invocation  with  "  Frank  But 
ton  " —  particularly  stanzas  first  and  seventeenth  — 
and  I  think  the  reader  will  feel  convinced  that  he 
who  wrote  the  one  had  read  the  other :  * 

I. 

"  Frank  Dutton  was  as  fine  a  lad 

As  ever  you  wish  to  see, 
And  he  was  drowned  in  Pine  Island  Lake 

On  earth  no  more  will  he  be, 
His  age  was  near  fifteen  years, 

And  he  was  a  motherless  boy, 
He  was  living  with  his  grandmother 

When  he  was  drowned,  poor  boy. 

XVII. 

"  He  was  drowned  on  Tuesday  afternoon, 

On  Sunday  he  was  found, 
And  the  tidings  of  that  drowned  boy 

Was  heard  for  miles  around. 
His  form  was  laid  by  his  mother's  side, 

Beneath  the  cold,  cold  ground, 
His  friends  for  him  will  drop  a  tear 

When  they  view  his  little  mound." 


*  The  Sentimental  Song  Book.     By  Mrs.  Julia  Moore,  p.  36. 


CHAPTER   IX. 

It  is  your  human  environment  that  makes  climate, 

—Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

SEPT.    15 — Night.      Close     to    Australia     now, 
Sydney  50  miles  distant. 

That  note  recalls  an  experience.  The  passengers 
were  sent  for,  to  come  up  in  the  bow  and  see  a  fine 
sight.  It  was  very  dark.  One  could  not  follow 
with  the  eye  the  surface  of  the  sea  more  than  fifty 
yards  in  any  direction  —  it  dimmed  away  and  be 
came  lost  to  sight  at  about  that  distance  from  us. 
But  if  you  patiently  gazed  into  the  darkness  a  little 
while,  there  was  a  sure  reward  for  you.  Presently, 
a  quarter  of  a  mile  away  you  would  see  a  blinding 
splash  or  explosion  of  light  on  the  water  —  a  flash 
so  sudden  and  so  astonishingly  brilliant  that  it  would 
make  you  catch  your  breath ;  then  that  blotch  of 
light  would  instantly  extend  itself  and  take  the 
corkscrew  shape  and  imposing  length  of  the  fabled 
sea-serpent,  with  every  curve  of  its  body  and  the 
"break"  spreading  away  from  its  head,  and  the 
wake  following  behind  its  tail  clothed  in  a  fierce 
splendor  of  living  fire.  And  my,  but  it  was  coming 
at  a  lightning  gait !  Almost  before  you  could  think, 

(107) 


108  Following  the  Equator 

this  monster  of  light,  fifty  feet  long,  would  go 
flaming  and  storming  by,  and  suddenly  disappear. 
And  out  in  the  distance  whence  he  came  you  would 
see  another  flash;  and  another  and  another  and 
another,  and  see  them  turn  into  sea-serpents  on  the 
instant;  and  once  sixteen  flashed  up  at  the  same 
time  and  came  tearing  toward  us,  a  swarm  of  wig 
gling  curves,  a  moving  conflagration,  a  vision  of 
bewildering  beauty,  a  spectacle  of  fire  and  energy 
whose  equal  the  most  of  those  people  will  not  see 
again  until  after  they  are  dead. 

It  was  porpoises  —  porpoises  aglow  with  phos 
phorescent  light.  They  presently  collected  in  a  wild 
and  magnificent  jumble  under  the  bows,  and  there 
they  played  for  an  hour,  leaping  and  frolicking  and 
carrying  on,  turning  summersaults  in  front  of  the 
stem  or  across  it  and  never  getting  hit,  never  making 
a  miscalculation,  though  the  stem  missed  them  only 
about  an  inch,  as  a  rule.  They  were  porpoises  of 
the  ordinary  length  —  eight  or  ten  feet  —  but  every 
twist  of  their  bodies  sent  a  long  procession  of  united 
and  glowing  curves  astern.  That  fiery  jumble  was  an 
enchanting  thing  to  look  at,  and  we  stayed  out  the 
performance ;  one  cannot  have  such  a  show  as  that 
twice  in  a  lifetime.  The  porpoise  is  the  kitten  of  the 
sea ;  he  never  has  a  serious  thought,  he  cares  for  noth 
ing  but  fun  and  play.  But  I  think  I  never  saw  him 
at  his  winsomest  until  that  night.  It  was  near  a  center 
of  civilization,  and  he  could  have  been  drinking. 

By  and   by,  when   we   had   approached   to   some. 


Following  the  Equator  10Q 

where  within  thirty  miles  of  Sydney  Heads  the  great 
electric  light  that  is  posted  on  one  of  those  lofty 
ramparts  began  to  show,  and  in  time  the  little  spark 
grew  to  a  great  sun  and  pierced  the  firmament  of 
darkness  with  a  far-reaching  sword  of  light. 

Sydney  Harbor  is  shut  in  behind  a  precipice  that 
extends  some  miles  like  a  wall,  and  exhibits  no 
break  to  the  ignorant  stranger.  It  has  a  break  in 
the  middle,  but  it  makes  so  little  show  that  even 
Captain  Cook  sailed  by  it  without  seeing  it.  Near 
by  that  break  is  a  false  break  which  resembles  it, 
and  which  used  to  make  trouble  for  the  mariner  at 
night,  in  the  early  days  before  the  place  was  lighted. 
It  caused  the  memorable  disaster  to  the  Duncan 
Dunbar,  one  of  the  most  pathetic  tragedies  in  the 
history  of  that  pitiless  ruffian,  the  sea.  The  ship 
was  a  sailing  vessel ;  a  fine  and  favorite  passenger 
packet,  commanded  by  a  popular  captain  of  high 
reputation.  She  was  due  from  England,  and  Syd 
ney  was  waiting,  and  counting  the  hours;  counting 
the  hours,  and  making  ready  to  give  her  a  heart- 
stirring  welcome ;  for  she  was  bringing  back  a  great 
company  of  mothers  and  daughters,  the  long-missed 
light  and  bloom  of  life  of  Sydney  homes;  daughters 
that  had  been  years  absent  at  school,  and  mothers 
that  had  been  with  them  all  that  time  watching  over 
them.  Of  all  the  world  only  India  and  Australasia 
have  by  custom  freighted  ships  and  fleets  with  their 
hearts,  and  know  the  tremendous  meaning  of  that 
phrase;  only  they  know  what  the  waiting  is  like 


110  Following  the  Equator 

when  this  freightage  is  entrusted  to  the  fickle  winds, 
not  steam,  and  what  the  joy  is  like  when  the  ship 
that  is  returning  this  treasure  comes  safe  to  port  and 
the  long  dread  is  over. 

On  board  the  Duncan  Dunbar,  flying  toward 
Sydney  Heads  in  the  waning  afternoon,  the  happy 
home-comers  made  busy  preparation,  for  it  was  not 
doubted  that  they  would  be  in  the  arms  of  their 
friends  before  the  day  was  done ;  they  put  away 
their  sea-going  clothes  and  put  on  clothes  meeter 
for  the  meeting,  their  richest  and  their  loveliest, 
these  poor  brides  of  the  grave.  But  the  wind  lost 
force,  or  there  was  a  miscalculation,  and  before  the 
Heads  were  sighted  the  darkness  came  on.  It  was 
said  that  ordinarily  the  captain  would  have  made  a 
safe  offing  and  waited  for  the  morning;  but  this  was 
no  ordinary  occasion ;  all  about  him  were  appealing 
faces,  faces  pathetic  with  disappointment.  So  his 
sympathy  moved  him  to  try  the  dangerous  passage 
in  the  dark.  He  had  entered  the  Heads  seventeen 
times,  and  believed  he  knew  the  ground.  So  he 
steered  straight  for  the  false  opening,  mistaking  it 
for  the  true  one.  He  did  not  find  out  that  he  was 
wrong  until  it  was  too  late.  There  was  no  saving 
the  ship.  The  great  seas  swept  her  in  and  crushed 
her  to  splinters  and  rubbish  upon  the  rock  tushes  at 
the  base  of  the  precipice.  Not  one  of  all  that  fair 
and  gracious  company  was  ever  seen  again  alive. 
The  tale  is  told  to  every  stranger  that  passes  the 
spot,  and  it  will  continue  to  be  told  to  all  that  come, 


Following  the  Equator  111 

for  generations;  but  it  will  never  grow  old,  custom 
cannot  stale  it,  the  heart-break  that  is  in  it  can  never 
perish  out  of  it. 

There  were  two  hundred  persons  in  the  ship,  and 
but  one  survived  the  disaster.  He  was  a  sailor.  A 
huge  sea  flung  him  up  the  face  of  the  precipice  and 
stretched  him  on  a  narrow  shelf  of  rock  midway 
between  the  top  and  the  bottom,  and  there  he  lay 
all  night.  At  any  other  time  he  would  have  lain 
there  for  the  rest  of  his  life,  without  chance  of  dis 
covery;  but  the  next  morning  the  ghastly  news 
swept  through  Sydney  that  the  Duncan  Dunbar  had 
gone  down  in  sight  of  home,  and  straightway  the 
walls  of  the  Heads  were  black  with  mourners;  and 
one  of  these,  stretching  himself  out  over  the  preci 
pice  to  spy  out  what  might  be  seen  below,  discov 
ered  this  miraculously  preserved  relic  of  the  wreck. 
Ropes  were  brought,  and  the  nearly  impossible  feat 
of  rescuing  the  man  was  accomplished.  He  was  a 
person  with  a  practical  turn  of  mind,  and  he  hired  a 
hall  in  Sydney  and  exhibited  himself  at  sixpence  a 
head  till  he  exhausted  the  output  of  the  gold  fields 
for  that  year. 

We  entered  and  cast  anchor,  and  in  the  morning 
went  oh-ing  and  ah-ing  in  admiration  up  through 
the  crooks  and  turns  of  the  spacious  and  beautiful 
harbor  —  a  harbor  which  is  the  darling  of  Sydney 
and  the  wonder  of  the  world.  It  is  not  surprising 
that  the  people  are  proud  of  it,  nor  that  they  put 
their  enthusiasm  into  eloquent  words.  A  returning 


112  Following  the  Equator 

citizen  asked  me  what  I  thought  of  it,  and  I  testified 
with  a  cordiality  which  I  judged  would  be  up  to  the 
market  rate.  I  said  it  was  beautiful  —  superbly 
beautiful.  Then  by  a  natural  impulse  I  gave  God 
the  praise.  The  citizen  did  not  seem  altogether 
satisfied.  He  said: 

"It  is  beautiful,  of  course  it's  beautiful  —  the 
Harbor;  but  that  isn't  all  of  it,  it's  only  half  of  it; 
Sydney's  the  other  half,  and  it  takes  both  of  them 
together  to  ring  the  supremacy-bell.  God  made  the 
Harbor,  and  that's  all  right;  but  Satan  made 
Sydney." 

Of  course  I  made  an  apology;  and  asked  him  to 
convey  it  to  his  friend.  He  was  right  about  Sydney 
being  half  of  it.  It  would  be  beautiful  without 
Sydney,  but  not  above  half  as  beautiful  as  it  is  now, 
with  Sydney  added.  It  is  shaped  somewhat  like  an 
oak-leaf  —  a  roomy  sheet  of  lovely  blue  water,  with 
narrow  off-shoots  of  water  running  up  into  the 
country  on  both  sides  between  long  fingers  of  land, 
high  wooden  ridges  with  sides  sloped  like  graves. 
Handsome  villas  are  perched  here  and  there  on  these 
ridges,  snuggling  amongst  the  foliage,  and  one 
catches  alluring  glimpses  of  them  as  the  ship  swims 
by  toward  the  city.  The  city  clothes  a  cluster  of 
hills  and  a  ruffle  of  neighboring  ridges  with  its  undu 
lating  masses  of  masonry,  and  out  of  these  masses 
spring  towers  and  spires  and  other  architectural 
dignities  and  grandeurs  that  break  the  flowing  lines 
and  give  picturesqueness  to  the  general  effect. 


Following  the  Equator  113 

The  narrow  inlets  which  I  have  mentioned  go 
wandering  out  into  the  land  everywhere  and  hiding 
themselves  in  it,  and  pleasure-launches  are  always 
exploring  them  with  picnic  parties  on  board.  It  is 
said  by  trustworthy  people  that  if  you  explore  them 
all  you  will  find  that  you  have  covered  700  miles  of 
water  passage.  But  there  are  Hars  everywhere  this 
year,  and  they  will  double  that  when  their  works  are 
in  good  going  order. 

October  was  close  at  hand,  spring  was  come.  It 
was  really  spring  —  everybody  said  so;  but  you 
could  have  sold  it  for  summer  in  Canada,  and  no 
body  would  have  suspected.  It  was  the  very 
weather  that  makes  our  home  summers  the  perfec 
tion  of  climatic  luxury;  I  mean,  when  you  are  out 
in  the  wood  or  by  the  sea.  But  these  people  said 
it  was  cool,  now- — a  person  ought  to  see  Sydney  in 
the  summer  time  if  he  wanted  to  know  what  warm 
weather  is ;  and  he  ought  to  go  north  ten  or  fifteen 
hundred  miles  if  he  wanted  to  know  what  hot 
weather  is.  They  said  that  away  up  there  toward 
the  equator  the  hens  laid  fried  eggs.  Sydney  is  the 
place  to  go  to  get  information  about  other  people's 
climates.  It  seems  to  me  that  the  occupation  of 
Unbiased  Traveler  Seeking  Information  is  the  pleas- 
antest  and  most  irresponsible  trade  there  is.  The 
traveler  can  always  find  out  anything  he  wants  to, 
merely  by  asking.  He  can  get  at  all  the  facts',  and 
more.  Everybody  helps  him,  nobody  hinders  him. 
Anybody  who  has  an  old  fact  in  stock  that  is  no 


114  Following  the  Equator 

longer  negotiable  in  the  domestic  market  will  let  him 
have  it  at  his  own  price.  An  accumulation  of  such 
goods  is  easily  and  quickly  made.  They  cost  almost 
nothing  and  they  bring  par  in  the  foreign  market. 
Travelers  who  come  to  America  always  freight  up 
with  the  same  old  nursery  tales  that  their  predeces 
sors  selected,  and  they  carry  them  back  and  always 
work  them  off  without  any  trouble  in  the  home 
market. 

If  the  climates  of  the  world  were  determined  by 
parallels  of  latitude,  then  we  could  know  a  place's 
climate  by  its  position  on  the  map ;  and  so  we 
should  know  that  the  climate  of  Sydney  was  the 
counterpart  of  the  climate  of  Columbia,  S.  C.,  and 
of  Little  Rock,  Ark.,  since  Sydney  is  about  the 
same  distance  south  of  the  equator  that  those  other 
towns  are  north  of  it  —  thirty-four  degrees.  But 
no,  climate  disregards  the  parallels  of  latitude.  In 
Arkansas  they  have  a  winter;  in  Sydney  they  have 
the  name  of  it,  but  not  the  thing  itself.  I  have  seen 
the  ice  in  the  Mississippi  floating  past  the  mouth  of 
the  Arkansas  river;  and  at  Memphis,  but  a  little 
way  above,  the  Mississippi  has  been  frozen  over, 
from  bank  to  bank.  But  they  have  never  had  a  cold 
spell  in  Sydney  which  brought  the  mercury  down  to 
freezing  point.  Once  in  a  mid-winter  day  there,  in 
the  month  of  July,  the  mercury  went  down  to  36°, 
and  that  remains  the  memorable  "  cold  day  "  in  the 
history  of  the  town.  No  doubt  Little  Rock  has  seen 
it  below  zero.  Once,  in  Sydney,  in  mid-summer, 


Following  the  Equator  115 

about  New  Year's  Day,  the  mercury  went  up  to 
1 06°  in  the  shade,  and  that  is  Sydney's  memorable 
hot  day.  That  would  about  tally  with  Little  Rock's 
hottest  day  also,  I  imagine.  My  Sydney  figures  are 
taken  from  a  government  report,  and  are  trust 
worthy.  In  the  matter  of  summer  weather  Arkansas 
has  no  advantage  over  Sydney,  perhaps,  but  when 
it  comes  to  winter  weather,  that  is  another  affair. 
You  could  cut  up  an  Arkansas  winter  into  a  hundred 
Sydney  winters  and  have  enough  left  for  Arkansas 
and  the  poor. 

The  whole  narrow,  hilly  belt  of  the  Pacific  side  of 
New  South  Wales  has  the  climate  of  its  capital  —  a 
mean  winter  temperature  of  54°  and  a  mean  summer 
one  of  71°.  It  is  a  climate  which  cannot  be  im 
proved  upon  for  healthfulness.  But  the  experts  say 
that  90°  in  New  South  Wales  is  harder  to  bear  than 
112°  in  the  neighboring  colony  of  Victoria,  because 
the  atmosphere  of  the  former  is  humid,  and  of  the 
latter  dry. 

The  mean  temperature  of  the  southernmost  point 
of  New  South  Wales  is  the  same  as  that  of  Nice  — 
60° — yet  Nice  is  further  from  the  equator  by  460 
miles  than  is  the  former. 

But  Nature  is  always  stingy  of  perfect  climates; 
stingier  in  the  case  of  Australia  than  usual.  Ap 
parently,  this  vast  continent  has  a  really  good 
climate  nowhere  but  around  the  edges. 

If  we  look  at  a  map  of  the  world  we  are  surprised 
to  see  how  big  Australia  is.  It  is  about  two-thirds 

B* 


116 


Following  the  Equator 


as   large   as  the  United  States  was  before  we  added 
Alaska. 

But  whereas  one  finds  a  sufficiently  good  climate 
and  fertile  land  almost  everywhere  in  the  United 
States,  it  seems  settled  that  inside  of  the  Australian 
border-belt  one  finds  many  deserts  and  in  spots  a 
climate  which  nothing  can  stand  except  a  few  of  the 
hardier  kinds  of  rocks.  In  effect,  Australia  is  as 
yet  unoccupied.  If  you  take  a  map  of  the  United 


States  and  leave  the  Atlantic  seaboard  States  in 
their  places ;  also  the  fringe  of  Southern  States  from 
Florida  west  to  the  Mouth  of  the  Mississippi ;  also 
a  narrow,  inhabited  streak  up  the  Mississippi  half 
way  to  its  headwaters ;  also  a  narrow,  inhabited 
border  along  the  Pacific  coast;  then  take  a  brushful 
of  paint  and  obliterate  the  whole  remaining  mighty 
stretch  of  country  that  lies  between  the  Atlantic 
States  and  the  Pacific-coast  strip,  your  map  will 
look  like  the  latest  map  of  Australia. 

This  stupendous  blank  is  hot,  not  to  say  torrid ; 
a  part  of  it  is  fertile,  the  rest  is  desert;  it  is  not 
liberally  watered  ;  it  has  no  towns.  One  has  only 


Following  the  Equator  117 

to  cross  the  mountains  of  New  South  Wales  and 
descend  into  the  westward-lying  regions  to  find  that 
he  has  left  the  choice  climate  behind  him,  and 
found  a  new  one  of  a  quite  different  character.  In 
fact,  he  would  not  know  by  the  thermometer  that 
he  was  not  in  the  blistering  Plains  of  India.  Cap 
tain  Sturt,  the  great  explorer,  gives  us  a  sample  of 
the  heat. 

"The  wind,  which  had  been  blowing  all  the  morning  from  the 
N.E.,  increased  to  a  heavy  gale,  and  I  shall  never  forget  its  withering 
effect.  I  sought  shelter  behind  a  large  gum-tree,  but  the  blasts  of  heat 
were  so  terrific  that  I  wondered  the  very  grass  did  not  take  fire.  This 
really  was  nothing  ideal:  everything  both  animate  and  inanimate  gave 
way  before  it;  the  horses  stood  with  their  backs  to  the  wind  and  their 
noses  to  the  ground,  without  the  muscular  strength  to  raise  their  heads; 
the  birds  were  mute,  and  the  leaves  of  the  trees  under  which  we  were 
sitting  fell  like  a  snow  shower  around  us.  At  noon  I  took  a  ther 
mometer  graded  to  127°,  out  of  my  box,  and  observed  that  the  mercury 
was  up  to  125°.  Thinking  that  it  had  been  unduly  influenced,  I  put  it 
in  the  fork  of  a  tree  close  to  me,  sheltered  alike  from  the  wind  and  the 
sun.  I  went  to  examine  it  about  an  hour  afterwards,  when  I  found  the 
mercury  had  risen  to  the  top  of  the  instrument  and  had  burst  the  bulb, 
a  circumstance  that  I  believe  no  traveler  has  ever  before  had  to  record. 
I  cannot  find  language  to  convey  to  the  reader's  mind  an  idea  of  the 
intense  and  oppressive  nature  of  the  heat  that  prevailed.*" 

That  hot  wind  sweeps  over  Sydney  sometimes, 
and  brings  with  it  what  is  called  a  "dust-storm." 
It  is  said  that  most  Australian  towns  are  acquainted 
with  the  dust-storm.  I  think  I  know  what  it  is  like, 
for  the  following  description  by  Mr.  Gane  tallies  very 
well  with  the  alkali  dust-storm  of  Nevada,  if  you 
leave  out  the  "shovel"  part.  Still  the  shovel  part 
is  a  pretty  important  part,  and  seems  to  indicate 
that  my  Nevada  storm  is  but  a  poor  thing,  after  all. 


118  Following  the  Equator 

"  As  we  proceeded  the  altitude  became  less,  and  the  heat  propor 
tionately  greater  until  we  reached  Dubbo,  which  is  only  600  feet  above 
sea-level.  It  is  a  pretty  town,  built  on  an  extensive  plain.  .  .  . 
After  the  effects  of  a  shower  of  rain  have  passed  away  the  surface  of  the 
ground  crumbles  into  a  thick  layer  of  dust,  and  occasionally,  when  the 
wind  is  in  a  particular  quarter,  it  is  lifted  bodily  from  the  ground  in 
one  long  opaque  cloud.  In  the  midst  of  such  a  storm  nothing  can  be 
seen  a  few  yards  ahead,  and  the  unlucky  person  who  happens  to  be  out 
at  the  time  is  compelled  to  seek  the  nearest  retreat  at  hand.  When  the 
thrifty  housewife  sees  in  the  distance  the  dark  column  advancing  in  a 
steady  whirl  towards  her  house,  she  closes  the  doors  and  windows  with 
all  expedition.  A  drawing-room,  the  window  of  which  has  been  care 
lessly  left  open  during  a  dust-storm,  is  indeed  an  extraordinary  sight. 
A  lady  who  has  resided  in  Dubbo  for  some  years  says  that  the  dust  lies 
so  thick  on  the  carpet  that  it  is  necessary  to  use  a  shovel  to  remove  it." 

And  probably  a  wagon.  I  was  mistaken;  I  have 
not  seen  a  proper  dust-storm.  To  my  mind  the 
exterior  aspects  and  character  of  Australia  are 
fascinating  things  to  look  at  and  think  about,  they 
are  so  strange,  so  weird,  so  new,  so  uncommon- 
place,  such  a  startling  and  interesting  contrast  to 
the  other  sections  of  the  planet,  the  sections  that  are 
known  to  us  all,  familiar  to  us  all.  In  the  matter  of 
particulars  —  a  detail  here,  a  detail  there  —  we  have 
had  the  choice  climate  of  New  South  Wales'  sea- 
coast;  we  have  had  the  Australian  heat  as  furnished 
by  Captain  Sturt;  we  have  had  the  wonderful  dust- 
storm  ;  and  we  have  considered  the  phenomenon  of 
an  almost  empty  hot  wilderness  half  as  big  as  the 
United  States,  with  a  narrow  belt  of  civilization, 
population,  and  good  climate  around  it. 


CHAPTER   X. 

Everything  human  is  pathetic.    The  secret  source  of  Humor  itself  is  not 
joy  but  sorrow.    There  is  no  humor  in  heaven. 

—PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 


CAPTAIN  COOK  found  Australia  in  1770,  and 
V-  eighteen  years  later  the  British  Government 
began  to  transport  convicts  to  it.  Altogether,  New 
South  Wales  received  83,000  in  53  years.  The 
convicts  wore  heavy  chains;  they  were  ill-fed  and 
badly  treated  by  the  officers  set  over  them ;  they 
were  heavily  punished  for  even  slight  infractions  of 
the  rules;  "the  crudest  discipline  ever  known"  is 
one  historian's  description  of  their  life.* 

English  law  was  hard-hearted  in  those  days.  For 
trifling  offenses  which  in  our  day  would  be  punished 
by  a  small  fine  or  a  few  days'  confinement,  men, 
women,  and  boys  were  sent  to  this  other  end  of  the 
earth  to  serve  terms  of  seven  and  fourteen  years ; 
and  for  serious  crimes  they  were  transported  for  life. 
Children  were  sent  to  the  penal  colonies  for  seven 
years  for  stealing  a  rabbit ! 

When  I  was  in  London  twenty-three  years  ago 
there  was  a  new  penalty  in  force  for  diminishing 

*The  Story  of  Australasia.     J.  S.  Laurie. 

(H9) 


120  Following  the  Equator 

garroting  and  wife-beating — 25  lashes  on  the  bare 
back  with  the  cat-o'-nine-tails.  It  was  said  that  this 
terrible  punishment  was  able  to  bring  the  stubbornest 
ruffians  to  terms ;  and  that  no  man  had  been  found 
with  grit  enough  to  keep  his  emotions  to  himself 
beyond  the  ninth  blow;  as  a  rule  the  man  shrieked 
earlier.  That  penalty  had  a  great  and  wholesome 
effect  upon  the  garroters  and  wife-beaters;  but 
humane  modern  London  could  not  endure  it;  it  got 
its  law  rescinded.  Many  a  bruised  and  battered 
English  wife  has  since  had  occasion  to  deplore  that 
cruel  achievement  of  sentimental  "  humanity." 

Twenty-five  lashes  !  In  Australia  and  Tasmania 
they  gave  a  convict  fifty  for  almost  any  little  offense ; 
and  sometimes  a  brutal  officer  would  add  fifty,  and 
then  another  fifty,  and  so  on,  as  long  as  the  sufferer 
could  endure  the  torture  and  live.  In  Tasmania  I 
read  the  entry,  in  an  old  manuscript  official  record, 
of  a  case  where  a  convict  was  given  three  hundred 
lashes  —  for  stealing  some  silver  spoons.  And  men 
got  more  than  that,  sometimes.  Who  handled  the 
cat?  Often  it  was  another  convict;  sometimes  it 
was  the  culprit's  dearest  comrade;  and  he  had  to 
lay  on  with  all  his  might ;  otherwise  he  would  get  a 
flogging  himself  for  his  mercy  —  for  he  was  under 
watch  —  and  yet  not  do  his  friend  any  good :  the 
friend  would  be  attended  to  by  another  hand  and 
suffer  no  lack  in  the  matter  of  full  punishment. 

The  convict  life  in  Tasmania  was  so  unendurable, 
and  suicide  so  difficult  to  accomplish,  that  once  or 


Following  the  Equator  121 

twice  despairing  men  got  together  and  drew  straws 
to  determine  which  of  them  should  kill  another  of 
the  group  —  this  murder  to  secure  death  to  the  per 
petrator  and  to  the  witnesses  of  it  by  the  hand  of 
the  hangman  ! 

The  incidents  quoted  above  are  mere  hints,  mere 
suggestions  of  what  convict  life  was  like  —  they  are 
but  a  couple  of  details  tossed  into  view  out  of  a 
shoreless  sea  of  such;  or,  to  change  the  figure, 
they  are  but  a  pair  of  flaming  steeples  photographed 
from  a  point  which  hides  from  sight  the  burning  city 
which  stretches  away  from  their  bases  on  every  hand. 

Some  of  the  convicts  — indeed,  a  good  many  of 
them  —  were  very  bad  people,  even  for  that  day; 
but  the  most  of  them  were  probably  not  noticeably 
worse  than  the  average  of  the  people  they  left  be 
hind  them  at  home.  We  must  believe  this;  we 
cannot  avoid  it.  We  are  obliged  to  believe  that  a 
nation  that  could  look  on,  unmoved,  and  see  starving 
or  freezing  women  hanged  for  stealing  twenty-six 
cents'  wrorth  of  bacon  or  rags,  and  boys  snatched 
from  their  mothers,  and  men  from  their  families, 
and  sent  to  the  other  side  of  the  world  for  long 
terms  of  years  for  similar  trifling  offenses,  was  a 
nation  to  whom  the  term  "civilized"  could  not  in 
any  large  way  be  applied.  And  we  must  also  be 
lieve  that  a  nation  that  knew,  during  more  than 
forty  years,  what  was  happening  to  those  exiles  and 
was  still  content  with  it,  was  not  advancing  in  any 
showy  way  toward  a  higher  grade  of  civilization, 


122  Following  the  Equator 

If  we  look  into  the  characters  and  conduct  of  the 
officers  and  gentlemen  who  had  charge  of  the  con- 
ivicts  and  attended  to  their  backs  and  stomachs,  we 
must  grant  again  that  as  between  the  convict  and  his 
masters,  and  between  both  and  the  nation  at  home, 
there  was  a  quite  noticeable  monotony  of  sameness. 

Four  years  had  gone  by,  and  many  convicts  had 
come.  Respectable  settlers  were  beginning  to  ar 
rive.  These  two  classes  of  colonists  had  to  be  pro 
tected,  in  case  of  trouble  among  themselves  or  with 
the  natives.  It  is  proper  to  mention  the  natives, 
though  they  could  hardly  count,  they  were  so  scarce. 
At  a  time  when  they  had  not  as  yet  begun,  to  be 
much  disturbed  —  not  as  yet  being  in  the  way  —  it 
was  estimated  that  in  New  South  Wales  there  was 
but  one  native  to  45 ,000  acres  of  territory. 

People  had  to  be  protected.  Officers  of  the 
regular  army  did  not  want  this  service  —  away  off 
there  where  neither  honor  nor  distinction  was  to  be 
gained.  So  England  recruited  and  officered  a  kind 
of  militia  force  of  1 ,000  uniformed  civilians  called 
the  "  New  South  Wales  Corps  "  and  shipped  it. 

This  was  the  worst  blow  of  all.  The  colony 
fairly  staggered  under  it.  The  Corps  was  an  object- 
.  w  lesson  of  the  moral  condition  of  England  outside  of 
the  jails.  The  colonists  trembled.  It  was  feared 
that  next  there  would  be  an  importation  of  the 
nobility. 

In  those  early  days  the  colony  was  non-support 
ing.  All  the  necessaries  of  life  —  food,  clothing, 


Following  the  Equator  123 

and  all  —  were  sent  out  from  England,  and  kept  in 
great  government  storehouses,  and  given  to  the 
convicts  and  sold  to  the  settlers  —  sold  at  a  trifling 
advance  upon  cost.  The  Corps  saw  its  opportunity. 
Its  officers  went  into  commerce,  and  in  a  most  law 
less  way.  They  went  to  importing  rum,  and  also  to 
manufacturing  it  in  private  stills,  in  defiance  of  the 
government's  commands  and  protests.  They  leagued 
themselves  together  and  ruled  the  market ;  they  boy 
cotted  the  government  and  the  other  dealers ;  they 
established  a  close  monopoly  and  kept  it  strictly  in 
their  own  hands.  When  a  vessel  arrived  with 
spirits,  they  allowed  nobody  to  buy  but  themselves, 
and  they  forced  the  owner  to  sell  to  them  at  a  price 
named  by  themselves  —  and  it  was  always  low 
enough.  They  bought  rum  at  an  average  of  two 
dollars  a  gallon  and  sold  it  at  an  average  of  ten. 
They  made  rum  the  currency  of  the  country—  -for 
there  was  little  or  no  money  —  and  they  maintained 
their  devastating  hold  and  kept  the  colony  under 
their  heel  for  eighteen  or  twenty  years  before  they 
were  finally  conquered  and  routed  by  the  govern 
ment. 

Meantime,  they  had  spread  intemperance  every 
where.  And  they  had  squeezed  farm  after  farm  out 
of  the  settlers'  hands  for  ruin,  and  thus  had  bounti 
fully  enriched  themselves.  When  a  farmer  was 
caught  in  the  last  agonies  of  thirst  they  took  advan 
tage  of  him  and  sweated  him  for  a  drink. 

In  one  instance  they  sold  a  man  a  gallon  of  rum 


124  Following  the  Equator 

worth  two  dollars  for  a  piece  of  property  which  was 
sold  some  years  later  for  $100,000. 

When  the  colony  was  about  eighteen  or  twenty 
years  old  it  was  discovered  that  the  land  was  spe 
cially  fitted  for  the  wool  culture.  Prosperity  fol 
lowed,  commerce  with  the  world  began,  by  and  by 
rich  mines  of  the  noble  metals  were  opened,  immi 
grants  flowed  in,  capital  likewise.  The  result  is  the 
great  and  wealthy  and  enlightened  commonwealth  of 
New  South  Wales. 

It  is  a  country  that  is  rich  in  mines,  wool  ranches, 
trams,  railways,  steamship  lines,  schools,  news 
papers,  botanical  gardens,  art  galleries,  libraries, 
museums,  hospitals,  learned  societies;  it  is  the  hos 
pitable  home  of  every  species  of  culture  and  of 
every  species  of  material  enterprise,  and  there  is  a 
church  at  every  man's  door,  and  a  race-track  over 
the  way. 


CHAPTER   XI. 

We  should  be  careful  to  get  out  of  an  experience  only  the  wisdom  that  is  in 
it  —  and  stop  there;  lest  we  be  like  the  cat  that  sits  down  on  a  hot  stove-lid. 
She  will  never  sit  down  on  a  hot  stove-lid  again  —  and  that  is  well;  but  also 
she  will  never  sit  down  on  a  cold  one  any  more. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

ALL  English-speaking  colonies  are  made  up  of 
lavishly  hospitable  people,  and  New  South 
Wales  and  its  capital  are  like  the  rest  in  this.  The 
English-speaking  colony  of  the  United  States  of 
America  is  always  called  lavishly  hospitable  by  the 
English  traveler.  As  to  the  other  English-speaking 
colonies  throughout  the  world  from  Canada  all 
around,  I  know  by  experience  that  the  description 
fits  them.  I  will  not  go  more  particularly  into  this 
matter,  for  I  find  that  when  writers  try  to  distribute 
their  gratitude  here  and  there  and  yonder  by  detail 
they  run  across  difficulties  and  do  some  ungraceful 
stumbling. 

Mr.  Gane  ("New  South  Wales  and  Victoria  in 
1885  "),  tried  to  distribute  his  gratitude,  and  was 
not  lucky : 

"The   inhabitants  of  Sydney   are   renowned    for   their  hospitality. 
The  treatment   which  we  experienced   at  the  hands  of  this  generous- 
hearted  people  will  help  more  than  anything  else  to  make  us  recollect 
9*  (125) 

" 


126  Following  the  Equator 

with  pleasure  our  stay  amongst  them.  In  the  character  of  hosts  and 
hostesses  they  excel.  The  « new  chum  '  needs  only  the  acquaintance 
ship  of  one  of  their  number,  and  he  becomes  at  once  the  happy 
recipient  of  numerous  complimentary  invitations  and  thoughtful  kind 
nesses.  Of  the  towns  it  has  been  our  good  fortune  to  visit,  none  have 
portrayed  home  so  faithfully  as  Sydney." 

Nobody  could  say  it  finer  than  that.  If  he  had 
put  in  his  cork  then,  and  stayed  away  from  Dubbo 
• — but  no;  heedless  man,  he  pulled  it  again.  Pulled 
it  when  he  was  away  along  in  his  book,  and  his 
memory  of  what  he  had  said  about  Sydney  had 
grown  dim : 

"  We  cannot  quit  the  promising  town  of  Dubbo  without  testifying, 
in  warm  praise,  to  the  kind-hearted  and  hospitable  usages  of  its  in 
habitants.  Sydney,  though  well  deserving  the  character  it  bears  of  its 
kindly  treatment  of  strangers,  possesses  a  little  formality  and  reserve. 
In  Dubbo,  on  the  contrary,  though  the  same  congenial  manners  prevail, 
there  is  a  pleasing  degree  of  respectful  familiarity  which  gives  the  town 
a  homely  comfort  not  often  met  with  elsewhere.  In  laying  on  one  side 
our  pen  we  feel  contented  in  having  been  able,  though  so  late  in  this 
work,  to  bestow  a  panegyric,  however  unpretentious,  on  a  town  which, 
though  possessing  no  picturesque  natural  surroundings,  nor  interesting 
architectural  productions,  has  yet  a  body  of  citizens  whose  hearts  cannot 
but  obtain  for  their  town  a  reputation  for  benevolence  and  kind- 
heartedness." 

I  wonder  what  soured  him  on  Sydney.  It  seems 
strange  that  a  pleasing  degree  of  three  or  four 
fingers  of  respectful  familiarity  should  fill  a  man  up 
and  give  him  the  panegyrics  so  bad.  For  he  has 
them,  the  worst  way  —  any  one  can  see  that.  A  man 
who  is  perfectly  at  himself  does  not  throw  cold  detrac 
tion  at  people's  architectural  productions  and  pic 
turesque  surroundings,  and  let  on  that  what  he  pre 
fers  is  a  Dubbonese  dust-storm  and  a  pleasing  degree 


Following  the  Equator  127 

of  respectful  familiarity.  No,  these  are  old,  old 
symptoms;  and  when  they  appear  we  know  that 
the  man  has  got  the  panegyrics. 

Sydney  has  a  population  of  400,000.  When  a 
stranger  from  America  steps  ashore  there,  the  first 
thing  that  strikes  him  is  that  the  place  is  eight  or 
nine  times  as  large  as  he  was  expecting  it  to  be ;  and 
the  next  thing  that  strikes  him  is  that  it  is  an  Eng 
lish  city  with  American  trimmings.  Later  on,  in 
Melbourne,  he  will  find  the  American  trimmings  still 
more  in  evidence;  there,  even  the  architecture  will 
often  suggest  America ;  a  photograph  of  its  stateli 
est  business  street  might  be  passed  upon  him  for  a 
picture  of  the  finest  street  in  a  large  American  city. 
I  was  told  that  the  most  of  the  fine  residences  were  the 
city  residences  of  squatters..  The  name  seemed  out 
of  focus  somehow.  When  the  explanation  came,  it 
offered  a  new  instance  of  the  curious  changes  which 
words,  as  well  as  animals,  undergo  through  change 
of  habitat  and  climate.  With  us,  when  you  speak 
of  a  squatter  you  are  always  supposed  to  be  speaking 
of  a  poor  man,  but  in  Australia  when  you  speak  of 
a  squatter  you  are  supposed  to  be  speaking  of  a 
millionaire ;  in  America  the  word  indicates  the  pos 
sessor  of  a  few  acres  and  a  doubtful  title,  in  Austra 
lia  it  indicates  a  man  whose  land  front  is  as  long  as  a 
railroad,  and  whose  title  has  been  perfected  in  one 
way  or  another ;  in  America  the  word  indicates  a 
man  who  owns  a  dozen  head  of  live  stock,  in 
Australia  a  man  who  owns  anywhere  from  fifty 


128  Following  the  Equator 

thousand  up  to  half  a  million  head ;  in  America  the 
word  indicates  a  man  who  is  obscure  and  not  im 
portant,  in  Australia  a  man  who  is  prominent  and  of 
the  first  importance ;  in  America  you  take  off  your 
hat  to  no  squatter,  in  Australia  you  do ;  in  America 
if  your  uncle  is  a  squatter  you  keep  it  dark,  in 
Australia  you  advertise  it;  in  America  if  your  friend 
is  a  squatter  nothing  comes  of  it,  but  with  a  squatter 
for  your  friend  in  Australia  you  may  sup  with  kings 
if  there  are  any  around. 

In  Australia  it  takes  about  two  acres  and  a  half  of 
pasture-land  (some  people  say  twice  as  many),  to 
support  a  sheep ;  and  when  the  squatter  has  half  a 
million  sheep  his  private  domain  is  about  as  large  as 
Rhode  Island,  to  speak  in  general  terms.  His 
annual  wool  crop  may  be  worth  a  quarter  or  a  half 
million  dollars. 

He  will  live  in  a  palace  in  Melbourne  or  Sydney 
or  some  other  of  the  large  cities,  and  make  occasional 
trips  to  his  sheep-kingdom  several  hundred  miles 
away  in  the  great  plains  to  look  after  his  battalions 
of  riders  and  shepherds  and  other  hands.  He  has  a 
commodious  dwelling  out  there,  and  if  he  approve 
of  you  he  will  invite  you  to  spend  a  week  in  it,  and 
will  make  you  at  home  and  comfortable,  and  let  you 
see  the  great  industry  in  all  its  details,  and  feed  you 
and  slake  you  and  smoke  you  with  the  best  that 
money  can  buy. 

On  at  least  one  of  these  vast  estates  there  is  a  con 
siderable  town,  with  all  the  various  businesses  and 


Following  the  Equator  129 

occupations  that  go  to  make  an  important  town ; 
and  the  town  and  the  land  it  stands  upon  are  the 
property  of  the  squatters.  I  have  seen  that  town, 
and  it  is  not  unlikely  that  there  are  other  squatter- 
owned  towns  in  Australia. 

Australia  supplies  the  world  not  only  with  fine 
wool,  but  with  mutton  also.  The  modern  invention 
of  cold  storage  and  its  application  in  ships  has 
created  this  great  trade.  In  Sydney  I  visited  a  huge 
establishment  where  they  kill  and  clean  and  solidly 
freeze  a  thousand  sheep  a  day,  for  shipment  to 
England. 

The  Australians  did  not  seem  to  me  to  differ 
noticeably  from  Americans,  either  in  dress,  carriage, 
ways,  pronunciation,  inflections,  or  general  appear 
ance.  There  were  fleeting  and  subtle  suggestions  of 
their  English  origin,  but  these  were  not  pronounced 
enough,  as  a  rule,  to  catch  one's  attention.  The 
people  have  easy  and  cordial  manners  from  the  be 
ginning —  from  the  moment  that  the  introduction  is 
completed.  This  is  American.  To  put  it  in  another 
way,  it  is  English  friendliness  with  the  English  shy 
ness  and  self-consciousness  left  out. 

Now  and  then  —  but  this  is  rare  —  one  hears  such 
words  as  piper  for  paper,  lydy  for  lady,  and  tyble  for 
table  fall  from  lips  whence  one  would  not  expect 
such  pronunciations  to  come.  There  is  a  superstition 
prevalent  in  Sydney  that  this  pronunciation  is  an 
Australianism,  but  people  who  have  been  "  home  " 

*—  as  the  native  reverently  and  lovingly  calls  England 
9* 


130  Following  the  Equator 

—  know  better  It  is  "  costermonger."  All  over 
Australasia  this  pronunciation  is  nearly  as  common 
among  servants  as  it  is  in  London  among  the  unedu 
cated  and  the  partially  educated  of  all  sorts  and  con 
ditions  of  people.  That  mislaid  y  is  rather  striking 
when  a  person  gets  enough  of  it  into  a  short  sentence 
to  enable  it  to  show  up.  In  the  hotel  in  Sydney 
the  chambermaid  said  one  morning: 

"The  tyble  is  set,  and  here  is  the  piper;  and  if 
the  lydy  is  ready  I'll  tell  the  wyter  to  bring  up  the 
breakfast." 

I  have  made  passing  mention,  a  moment  ago,  of 
the  native  Australasian's  custom  of  speaking  of  Eng 
land  as  "home."  It  was  always  pretty  to  hear  it, 
and  often  it  was  said  in  an  unconsciously  caressing 
way  that  made  it  touching;  in  a  way  which  trans 
muted  a  sentiment  into  an  embodiment,  and  made 
one  seem  to  see  Australasia  as  a  young  girl  stroking 
mother  England's  old  gray  head. 

In  the  Australasian  home  the  table-talk  is  vivacious 
and  unembarrassed  ;  it  is  without  stiffness  or  restraint. 
This  does  not  remind  one  of  England  so  much  as  it 
does  of  America.  But  Australasia  is  strictly  demo 
cratic,  and  reserves  and  restraints  are  things  that  are 
bred  by  differences  of  rank. 

English  and  colonial  audiences  are  phenomenally 
alert  and  responsive.  Where  masses  of  people  are 
gathered  together  in  England,  caste  is  submerged, 
and  with  it  the  English  reserve ;  equality  exists  for 
the  moment,  and  every  individual  is  free;  so  free 


Following  the  Equator  131 

from  any  consciousness  of  fetters,  indeed,  that  the 
Englishman's  habit  of  watching  himself  and  guard 
ing  himself  against  any  injudicious  exposure  of  his 
feelings  is  forgotten,  and  falls  into  abeyance  —  and 
to  such  a  degree,  indeed,  that  he  will  bravely  applaud 
all  by  himself  if  he  wants  to  —  an  exhibition  of  dar 
ing  which  is  unusual  elsewhere  in  the  world. 

But  it  is  hard  to  move  a  new  English  acquaintance 
when  he  is  by  himself,  or  when  the  company  present 
is  small,  and  new  to  him.  He  is  on  his  guard  then, 
and  his  natural  reserve  is  to  the  fore.  This  has 
given  him  the  false  reputation  of  being  without 
humor  and  without  the  appreciation  of  humor. 
Americans  are  not  Englishmen,  and  American  humor 
is  not  English  humor;  but  both  the  American  and 
his  humor  had  their  origin  in  England,  and  have 
merely  undergone  changes  brought  about  by  changed 
conditions  and  a  new  environment.  About  the  best 
humorous  speeches  I  have  yet  heard  were  a  couple 
that  were  made  in  Australia  at  club  suppers  —  one  of 
them  by  an  Englishman,  the  other  by  an  Australian. 


V 


CHAPTER  XII. 


There  are  those  who  scoff  at  the  schoolboy,  calling  him  frivolous  and  shal« 
low.  Yet  it  was  the  schoolboy  who  said,  "  Faith  is  believing  what  you  know 
ain't  so."  — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 


IN  Sydney  I  had  a  large  dream,  and  in  the  course 
of  talk  I  told  it  to  a  missionary  from  India  who 
was  on  his  way  to  visit  some  relatives  in  New  Zea 
land.  I  dreamed  that  the  visible  universe  is  the 
physical  person  of  God;  that  the  vast  worlds  that  we 
see  twinkling  millions  of  miles  apart  in  the  fields  of 
space  are  the  blood  corpuscles  in  His  veins ;  and  that 
we  and  the  other  creatures  are  the  microbes  that 
charge  with  multitudinous  life,  the  corpuscles. 

Mr.  X.,  the  missionary,  considered  the  dream 
awhile,  then  said : 

"  It  is  not  surpassable  for  magnitude,  since  its  metes  and  bounds  are 
the  metes  and  bounds  of  the  universe  itself ;  and  it  seems  to  me  that  it 
almost  accounts  for  a  thing  which  is  otherwise  nearly  unaccountable  — 
the  origin  of  the  sacred  legends  of  the  Hindoos.  Perhaps  they  dream 
them,  and  then  honestly  believe  them  to  be  divine  revelations  of  fact.  It 
looks  like  that,  for  the  legends  are  built  on  so  vast  a  scale  that  it  does 
not  seem  reasonable  that  plodding  priests  would  happen  upon  such 
colossal  fancies  when  awake." 

He  told  some  of  the  legends,  and  said  that  they 
were  implicitly  believed  by  all  classes  of  Hindoos, 

(132; 


Following  the  Equator  133 

including  those  of  high  social  position  and  intelj 
ligence ;  and  he  said  that  this  universal  credulity  was 
a  great  hindrance  to  the  missionary  in  his  work. 
Then  he  said  something  like  this : 

"At  home,  people  wonder  why  Christianity  does  not  make  faster 
progress  in  India.  They  hear  that  the  Indians  believe  easily,  and  that 
they  have  a  natural  trust  in  miracles  and  give  them  a  hospitable  recep 
tion.  Then  they  argue  like  this:  since  the  Indian  believes  easily,  place 
Christianity  before  them  and  they  must  believe ;  confirm  its  truths  by 
the  biblical  miracles,  and  they  will  no  longer  doubt.  The  natural  deduc 
tion  is,  that  as  Christianity  makes  but  indifferent  progress  in  India,  the 
fault  is  with  us :  we  are  not  fortunate  in  presenting  the  doctrines  and 
the  miracles. 

"  But  the  truth  is,  we  are  not  by  any  means  so  well  equipped  as  they 
think.  We  have  not  the  easy  task  that  they  imagine.  To  use  a  military 
figure,  we  are  sent  against  the  enemy  with  good  powder  in  our  guns, 
but  only  wads  for  bullets  ;  that  is  to  say,  our  miracles  are  not  effective  ; 
the  Hindoos  do  not  care  for  them  ;  they  have  more  extraordinary  ones 
of  their  own.  All  the  details  of  their  own  religion  are  proven  and 
established  by  miracles  ;  the  details  of  ours  must  be  proven  in  the  same 
way.  When  I  first  began  my  work  in  India  I  greatly  underestimated 
the  difficulties  thus  put  upon  my  task.  A  correction  was  not  long  in 
coming.  I  thought  as  our  friends  think  at  home  —  that  to  prepare  my 
childlike  wonder-lovers  to  listen  with  favor  to  my  grave  message  I  only 
needed  to  charm  the  way  to  it  with  wonders,  marvels,  miracles.  With 
full  confidence  I  told  the  wonders  performed  by  Samson,  the  strongest 
man  that  had  ever  lived  —  for  so  I  called  him. 

"  At  first  I  saw  lively  anticipation  and  strong  interest  in  the  faces  of 
my  people,  but  as  I  moved  along  from  incident  to  incident  of  the  great 
story,  I  was  distressed  to  see  that  I  was  steadily  losing  the  sympathy  of 
my  audience.  I  could  not  understand  it.  It  was  a  surprise  to  me,  and 
a  disappointment.  Before  I  was  through,  the  fading  sympathy  had 
paled  to  indifference.  Thence  to  the  end  the  indifference  remained;  I 
was  not  able  to  make  any  impression  upon  it. 

"  A  good  old  Hindoo  gentleman  told  me  where  my  trouble  lay.  He 
said,  'We  Hindoos  recognize  a  god  by  the  work  of  his  hands  —  we 
accept  no  other  testimony.  Apparently,  this  is  also  the  rule  with  you 


1}4  Following  the  Equator 

Christians.  And  we  know  when  a  man  has  his  power  from  a  god  by 
the  fact  that  he  does  things  which  he  could  not  do,  as  a  man,  with  the 
mere  powers  of  a  man.  Plainly,  this  is  the  Christian's  way  also,  of 
knowing  when  a  man  is  working  by  a  god's  power  and  not  by  his  own. 
Vou  saw  that  there  was  a  supernatural  property  in  the  hair  of  Sairfeon; 
for  you  perceived  that  when  his  hair  was  gone  he  was  as  other  men.  It 
is  our  way,  as  I  have  said.  There  are  many  nations  in  the  world,  and 
each  group  of  nations  has  it  own  gods,  and  wi  1  pay  no  worship  to  the 
gods  ol  the  others.  Each  group  believes  its  own  gods  to  be  strongest, 
and  it  will  not  exchange  them  except  for  gods  that  shall  be  proven  to  be 
their  superiors  in  power.  Man  is  but  a  weak  creature,  and  needs  the 
help  ol  gods  —  he  cannot  do  without  it.  Shall  he  place  his  fate  in  the 
hands  of  weak  gods  when  there  may  be  stronger  ones  to  be  found? 
That  would  be  foolish.  No,  if  he  hear  of  gods  that  are  stronger  than 
his  own,  he  should  not  turn  a  deaf  ear,  for  it  is  not  a  light  matter  that 
is  at  stake.  How  then  shall  he  determine  which  gods  are  the  stronger, 
his  own  or  those  that  preside  over  the  concerns  of  other  nations?  By 
comparing  the  known  works  of  his  own  gods  with  the  works  of  those 
others;  there  is  no  other  way.  Now,  when  we  make  this  comparison, 
we  are  not  drawn  towards  the  gods  of  any  other  nation.  Our  gods  are 
shown  by  their  works  to  be  the  strongest,  the  most  powerful.  The 
Christians  have  but  few  gods,  and  they  are  new  —  new,  and  not  strong, 
as  it  seems  to  us.  They  will  increase  in  number,  it  is  true,  for  this  has 
happened  with  all  gods,  but  that  time  is  far  away,  many  ages  and 
decades  cf  ages  away,  for  gods  multiply  slowly,  as  is  meet  for  beings  to 
whom  a  thousand  years  is  but  a  single  moment.  Our  own  gods  have 
been  born  millions  of  years  apart.  The  process  is  slow,  the  gathering 
of  strength  and  power  is  similarly  slow.  In  the  slow  lapse  of  the  ages 
the  steadily  accumulating  power  of  our  gods  has  at  last  become  prodigi 
ous.  We  have  a  thousand  proofs  of  this  in  the  colossal  character  of 
their  personal  acts  and  the  acts  of  ordinary  men  to  whom  they  have 
given  supernatural  qualities.  To  your  Samson  was  given  supernatural 
power,  and  when  he  broke  the  withes,  and  slew  the  thousands  with  the 
jawbone  of  an  ass,  and  carried  away  the  gates  of  the  city  upon  his 
shoulders,  you  were  amazed  —  and  also  awed,  for  you  recognized  the 
divine  source  of  his  strength.  But  it  could  not  profit  to  place  these 
things  before  your  Hindoo  congregation  and  invite  their  wonder;  for 
they  would  compare  them  with  the  deed  done  by  Hanuman,  when  our 
gods  infused  their  divine  strength  into  his  muscles;  and  they  would  be 


Following  the  Equator  135 

indifferent  to  them  —  as  you  saw.  In  the  old,  old  times,  ages  and  ages 
gone  by,  when  our  god  Rama  was  warring  with  the  demon  god  of 
Ceylon,  Rama  bethought  him  to  bridge  the  sea  and  connect  Ceylon  with 
India,  so  that  his  armies  might  pass  easily  over;  and  he  sent  his  general, 
Hanuman,  inspired  like  your  own  Samson  with  divine  strength,  to  bring 
the  materials  for  the  bridge.  In  two  days  Hanuman  strode  fifteen 
hundred  miles,  to  the  Himalayas,  and  took  upon  his  shoulder  a  range 
of  those  lofty  mountains  two  hundred  miles  long,  and  started  with  it 
toward  Ceylon.  It  was  in  the  night;  and,  as  he  passed  along  the  plain, 
the  people  of  Govardhun  heard  the  thunder  of  his  tread  and  felt  the 
earth  rocking  under  it,  and  they  ran  out,  and  there,  with  their  snowy 
summits  piled  to  heaven,  they  saw  the  Himalayas  passing  by.  And  as 
this  huge  continent  swept  along  overshadowing  the  earth,  upon  its  slopes 
they  discerned  the  twinkling  lights  of  a  thousand  sleeping  villages,  and 
it  was  as  if  the  constellations  were  filing  in  procession  through  the  sky. 
While  they  were  looking,  Hanuman  stumbled,  and  a  small  ridge  of  red 
sandstone  twenty  miles  long  was  jolted  loose  and  fell.  Half  of  its 
length  has  wasted  away  in  the  course  of  the  ages,  but  the  other  ten 
miles  of  it  remain  in  the  plain  by  Govardhun  to  this  day  as  proof  of  the 
might  of  the  inspiration  of  our  gods.  You  must  know,  yourself,  that 
Hanuman  could  not  have  carried  those  mountains  to  Ceylon  except  by 
the  strength  of  the  gods.  You  know  that  it  was  not  done  by  his  own 
strength,  therefore  you  know  that  it  was  done  by  the  strength  of  the 
gods,  just  as  you  know  that  Samson  carried  the  gates  by  the  divine 
strength  and  not  by  his  own.  I  think  you  must  concede  two  things: 
First,  That  in  carrying  the  gates  of  the  city  upon  his  shoulders,  Samson 
did  not  establish  the  superiority  of  his  gods  over  ours;  secondly,  That 
his  feat  is  not  supported  by  any  but  verbal  evidence,  while  Hanuman's 
is  not  only  supported  by  verbal  evidence,  but  this  evidence  is  confirmed, 
established,  proven,  by  visible,  tangible  evidence,  which  is  the  strongest 
of  all  testimony.  We  have  the  sandstone  ridge,  and  while  it  remains 
we  cannot  doubt,  and  shall  not.  Have  you  the  gates?  '  " 


CHAPTER   XIII. 

The  timid  man  yearns  for  full  value  and  demands  a  tenth.    The  bold  man 
Strikes  for  double  value  and  compromises  on  par. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

ONE  is  sure  to  be  struck  by  the  liberal  way  in 
which  Australasia  spends  money  upon  public 
works  —  such  as  legislative  buildings,  town  halls, 
hospitals,  asylums,  parks,  and  botanical  gardens.  I 
should  say  that  where  minor  towns  in  America  spend 
a  hundred  dollars  on  the  town  hall  and  on  public 
parks  and  gardens,  the  like  towns  in  Australasia 
spend  a  thousand.  And  I  think  that  this  ratio  will 
hold  good  in  the  matter  of  hospitals,  also.  I  have 
seen  a  costly  and  well-equipped,  and  architecturally 
handsome  hospital  in  an  Australian  village  of  fifteen 
hundred  inhabitants.  It  was  built  by  private  funds 
furnished  by  the  villagers  and  the  neighboring  plant 
ers,  and  its  running  expenses  were  drawn  from  the 
same  sources.  I  suppose  it  would  be  hard  to  match 
this  in  any  country.  This  village  was  about  to  close  a 
contract  for  lighting  the  streets  with  the  electric  light, 
when  I  was  there.  That  is  ahead  of  London.  Lon 
don  is  still  obscured  by  gas  —  gas  pretty  widely  scat 
tered,  too,  in  some  of  the  districts;  so  widely  indeed, 

(136) 


Following  the  Equator  137 

that  except  on  moonlight  nights  it  is  difficult  to  find 
the  gas  lamps. 

The  botanical  garden  of  Sydney  covers  thirty-eight 
acres,  beautifully  laid  out  and  rich  with  the  spoil  of 
all  the  lands  and  all  the  climes  of  the  world.  The 
garden  is  on  high  ground  in  the  middle  of  the  town, 
overlooking  the  great  harbor,  and  it  adjoins  the 
spacious  grounds  of  Government  House  —  fifty-six 
acres;  and  at  hand,  also,  is  a  recreation  ground  con 
taining  eighty- two  acres.  In  addition,  there  are  the 
zoological  gardens,  the  race-course,  and  the  great 
cricket-grounds  where  the  international  matches  are 
played.  Therefore  there  is  plenty  of  room  for  re 
poseful  lazying  and  lounging,  and  for  exercise  too, 
for  such  as  like  that  kind  of  work. 

There  are  four  specialties  attainable  in  the  way  of 
social  pleasure.  If  you  enter  your  name  on  the 
Visitor's  Book  at  Government  House  you  will  re 
ceive  an  invitation  to  the  next  ball  that  takes  place 
there,  if  nothing  can  be  proven  against  you.  And 
it  will  be  very  pleasant ;  for  you  will  see  everybody 
except  the  Governor,  and  add  a  number  of  acquaint 
ances  and  several  friends  to  your  list.  The  Gover 
nor  will  be  in  England.  He  always  is.  The  con 
tinent  has  four  or  five  governors,  and  I  do  not  know 
how  many  it  takes  to  govern  the  outlying  archipelago ; 
but  anyway  you  will  not  see  them.  When  they  are 
appointed  they  come  out  from  England  and  get 
inaugurated,  and  give  a  ball,  and  help  pray  for  rain, 
and  get  aboard  ship  and  go  back  home.  And  so 


138  Following  the  Equator 

the  Lieutenant-Governor  has  to  do  all  the  work.  I 
was  in  Australasia  three  months  and  a  half,  and  saw 
only  one  Governor.  The  others  were  at  home. 

The  Australasian  Governor  would  not  be  so  rest 
less,  perhaps,  if  he  had  a  war,  or  a  veto,  or  some 
thing  like  that  to  call  for  his  reserve-energies,  but  he 
hasn't.  There  isn't  any  war,  and  there  isn't  any 
veto  in  his  hands.  And  so  there  is  really  little  or 
nothing  doing  in  his  line.  The  country  governs 
itself,  and  prefers  to  do  it;  and  is  so  strenuous  about 
it  and  so  jealous  of  its  independence  that  it  grows 
restive  if  even  the  Imperial  Government  at  home 
proposes  to  help;  and  so  the  Imperial  veto,  while  a 
fact,  is  yet  mainly  a  name. 

Thus  the  Governor's  functions  are  much  more 
limited  than  are  a  Governor's  functions  with  us. 
And  therefore  more  fatiguing.  He  is  the  apparent 
head  of  the  State,  he  is  the  real  head  of  Society. 
He  represents  culture,  refinement,  elevated  senti 
ment,  polite  life,  religion;  and  by  his  example  he 
propagates  these,  and  they  spread  and  flourish  and 
bear  fruit.  He  creates  the  fashion,  and  leads  it. 
His  ball  is  the  ball  of  balls,  and  his  countenance 
makes  the  horse-race  thrive. 

He  is  usually  a  lord,  and  this  is  well ;  for  his  posi 
tion  compels  him  to  lead  an  expensive  life,  and  an 
English  lord  is  generally  well  equipped  for  that. 

Another  of  Sydney's  social  pleasures  is  the  visit  to 
the  Admiralty  House;  which  is  nobly  situated  on 
high  ground  overlooking  the  water.  The  trim  boats 


Following  the  Equator  139 

of  the  service  convey  the  guests  thither;  and  there, 
or  on  board  the  flagship,  they  have  the  duplicate 
of  the  hospitalities  of  Government  House.  The 
Admiral  commanding  a  station  in  British  waters  is  a 
magnate  of  the  first  degree,  artd  he  is  sumptuously 
housed,  as  becomes  the  dignity  of  his  office. 

Third  in  the  list  of  special  pleasures  is  the  tour  of 
the  harbor  in  a  fine  steam  pleasure  launch.  Your 
richer  friends  own  boats  of  this  kind,  and  they  will 
invite  you,  and  the  joys  of  the  trip  will  make  a  long 
day  seem  short. 

And  finally  comes  the  shark-fishing.  Sydney 
Harbor  is  populous  with  the  finest  breeds  of  man- 
eating  sharks  in  the  world.  Some  people  make  their 
living  catching  them ;  for  the  Government  pays  a 
cash  bounty  on  them.  The  larger  the  shark  the 
larger  the  bounty,  and  some  of  the  sharks  are  twenty 
feet  long.  You  not  only  get  the  bounty,  but  every 
thing  that  is  in  the  shark  belongs  to  you.  Some 
times  the  contents  are  quite  valuable. 

The  shark  is  the  swiftest  fish  that  swims.  The 
speed  of  the  fastest  steamer  afloat  is  poor  compared 
to  his  And  he  is  a  great  gad-about,  and  roams  far 
and  wide  in  the  oceans,  and  visits  the  shores  of  all  of 
them,  ultimately,  in  the  course  of  his  restless  excur 
sions.  I  have  a  tale  to  tell  now,  which  has  not  as 
yet  been  in  print.  In  1870  a  young  stranger  arrived 
in  Sydney,  and  set  about  finding  something  to  do; 
but  he  knew  no  one,  and  brought  no  recommenda 
tions,  and  the  result  was  that  he  got  no  employment, 


140  Following  the  Equator 

He  had  aimed  high,  at  first,  but  as  time  and  hia 
money  wasted  away  he  grew  less  and  less  exacting, 
until  at  last  he  was  willing  to  serve  in  the  humblest 
capacities  if  so  he  might  get  bread  and  shelter.  But 
luck  was  still  against  ftim ;  he  could  find  no  opening 
cf  any  sort.  Finally  his  money  was  all  gone.  He 
walked  the  streets  all  day,  thinking;  he  walked  them 
all  night,  thinking,  thinking,  and  growing  hungrier 
and  hungrier.  At  dawn  he  found  himself  well  away 
from  the  town  and  drifting  aimlessly  along  the  harbor 
shore.  As  he  was  passing  by  a  nodding  shark-fisher 
the  man  looked  up  and  said : 

"  Say,  young  fellow,   take  my  line  a  spell,  and 
change  my  luck  for  me." 

64  How  do  you  know  I  won't  make  it  worse?  " 
"  Because  you  can't.      It  has  been  at  its  worst  all 
night.     If  you  can't  change  it,  no  harm's  done;   if 
you   do   change   it,   it's  for   the   better,   of  course. 
Come." 

*'A11  right,  what  will  you  give?  " 
'*  I'll  give  you  the  shark,  if  you  catch  one." 
"And  I  will  eat  it,  bones  and  all.     Give  me  the 
line." 

"  Here  you  are.  I  will  get  away,  now,  for  awhile, 
so  that  my  luck  won't  spoil  yours;  for  many  and 
many  a  time  I've  noticed  that  if  —  there,  pull  in,  pull 
in,  man,  you've  got  a  bite!  /  knew  how  it  would 
be.  Why,  I  knew  you  for  a  born  son  of  luck  the 
minute  I  saw  you.  All  right  —  he's  landed." 
It  was  an  unusually  large  shark  —  *'a  full  nine- 


Following  the  Equator  141 

teen-footer,*'  the  fisherman  said,  as  he  laid  the  crea 
ture  open  with  his  knife. 

**  Now  you  rob  him,  young  man,  while  I  step  to 
my  hamper  for  a  fresh  bait.  There's  generally 
something  in  them  worth  going  for.  You've 
changed  my  luck,  you  see.  But,  my  goodness,  I 
hope  you  haven't  changed  your  own." 

"  Oh,  it  wouldn't  matter;  don't  worry  about  that. 
Get  your  bait.  I'll  rob  him." 

When  the  fisherman  got  back  the  young  man  had 
just  finished  washing  his  hands  in  the  bay  and  wag 
starting  away. 

"  What!  you  are  not  going?  " 

"Yes.     Good-bye." 

"But  what  about  your  shark?  " 

"  The  shark?     Why,  what  use  is  he  to  me?  " 

"  What  use  is  he?  I  like  that.  Don't  you  know 
that  we  can  go  and  report  him.  to  Government,  and 
you'll  get  a  clean  solid  eighty  shillings  bounty? 
Hard  cash,  you  know.  What  do  you  think  about  it 
now?" 

"  Oh,  well,  you  can  collect  it." 

"And  keep  it?     Is  that  what  you  mean?  " 

"Yes." 

"Well,  this  is  odd.  You're  one  of  those  sort 
they  call  eccentrics,  I  judge.  The  saying  is,  you 
mustn't  judge  a  man  by  his  clothes,  and  I'm  believ 
ing  it  now.  Why  yours  are  looking  just  ratty,  don't 
you  know;  and  yet  you  must  be  rich." 

"I  am." 


142  Following  the  Equator 

The  young  man  walked  slowly  back  to  the  town, 
deeply  musing  as  he  went.  He  halted  a  moment  in 
front  of  the  best  restaurant,  then  glanced  at  his 
clothes  and  passed  on,  and  got  his  breakfast  at  a 
41  stand-up."  There  was  a  good  deal  of  it,  and  it 
cost  five  shillings.  He  tendered  a  sovereign,  got 
his  change,  glanced  at  his  silver,  muttered  to  him 
self,  "  There  isn't  enough  to  buy  clothes  with,"  and 
went  his  way. 

At  half-past  nine  the  richest  wool-broker  in  Sydney 
was  sitting  in  his  morning-room  at  home,  settling 
his  breakfast  with  the  morning  paper.  A  servant 
put  his  head  in  and  said : 

44  There's  a  sundowner  at  the  door  wants  to  see 
you,  sir." 

41  What  do  you  bring  that  kind  of  a  message  here 
for?  Send  him  about  his  business." 

44  He  won't  go,  sir.     I've  tried." 

44  He  won't  go?  That's  —  why,  that's  unusual. 
He's  one  of  two  things,  then:  he's  a  remarkable 
person,  or  he's  crazy.  Is  he  crazy?  " 

44  No,  sir.     He  don't  look  it." 

44  Then  he's  remarkable.  What  does  he  say  he 
wants?" 

44  He  won't  tell,  sir;  only  says  it's  very  important.'' 

44And  won't  go.     Does  he  say  he  won't  go?  " 

41  Says  he'll  stand  there  till  he  sees  you,  sir,  if  it's 
all  day." 

4'And  yet  isn't  crazy.     Show  him  up." 

The  sundowner  was  shown  in.     The  broker  said 


Following  the  Equator  143 

to  himself,  "No,    he's    not  crazy;  that  is  easy  to 

see;  so  he  must  be  the  other  thing.1' 

Then  aloud,  '*  Well,  my  good  fellow,  be  quick  about 

it;   don't  waste  any  words;  what  is  it  you  want?  " 
"  I  want  to  borrow  a  hundred  thousand  pounds." 
"  Scott!      (It's  a  mistake;   he  is  crazy.   ...  No 

—  he  can't  be —  not  with  that  eye.)     Why,  you  take 
my  breath  away.     Come,  who  are  you?  " 

"  Nobody  that  you  know." 

"  What  is  your  name?  " 

"  Cecil  Rhodes." 

M  No,  I  don't  remember  hearing  the  name  before. 
Now  fhen — -just  for  curiosity's  sake  —  what  has 
sent  you  to  me  on  this  extraordinary  errand?  " 

4  The  intention  to  make  a  hundred  thousand 
pounds  for  you  and  as  much  for  myself  within  the 
next  sixty  days." 

l<Well,  well,  well.  It  is  the  most  extraordinary 
idea  that  I  —  sit  down  —  you  interest  me.  And 
somehow  you  —  well,  you  fascinate  me,  l  think  that 
that  is  about  the  v/crd.  And  it  isn't  your  proposi 
tion —  no,  that  doesn't  fascinate  me;  it's  something 
else,  I  don't  quite  know  what ;  something  that's  born 
in  you  and  oozes  out  of  you,  I  suppose.  Now  then 

—  just  for  curiosity's  sake  again,  nothing  more:   as 
I  understand  it,  it  is  your  desire  to  bor — " 

44  I  said  intention ." 

"  Pardon,  so  you  did.  I  thought  it  was  an  un- 
heedful  use  of  the  word  —  an  unheedful  valuing  of 
its  strength,  you  know." 


144  Following  the  Equator 

"  I  knew  its  strength." 

"Well,  I  must  say  —  but  look  here,  let  me  walk 
the  floor  a  little,  my  mind  is  getting  into  a  sort  of 
whirl,  though  you  don't  seem  disturbed  any. 
(Plainly  this  young  fellow  isn't  crazy;  but  as  to 
his  being  remarkable  —  well,  really  he  amounts  to 
that,  and  something  over.)  Now  then,  I  believe 
I  am  beyond  the  reach  of  further  astonishment. 
Strike*,  and  spare  not.  What  is  your  scheme?  " 

"To  buy  the  wool  crop  —  deliverable  in  sixty  days." 

''What,  the  whole  of  it?  " 

•'The  whole  of  it." 

*'  No,  I  was  not  quite  out  of  the  reach  of  sur 
prises,  after  all.  Why,  how  you  talk.  Do  you 
know  what  our  crop  is  going  to  foot  up?  " 

"  Two  and  a  half  million  sterling — maybe  a  little 
more." 

"Well,  you've  got  your  statistics  right,  any  way. 
Now,  then,  do  you  know  what  the  margins  would 
foot  up,  to  buy  it  at  sixty  days?  " 

"The  hundred  thousand  pounds  I  came  here  to 
get." 

"  Right,  once  more.  Well,  dear  me.  just  to  see 
what  would  happen,  I  wish  you  had  the  money. 
And  if  you  had  it,  what  would  you  do  with  it?  " 

"  I  shall  make  two  hundred  thousand  pounds  out 
of  it  in  sixty  days." 

"  You  mean,  of  course,  that  you  might  make  it  if — " 

"I  said  'shall'." 

*'  Yes,  by  George,  you  did  say  '  shall ' !     You  are 


Following  the  Equator  145 

the  most  definite  devil  I  ever  saw,  in  the  matter  of 
language.  Dear,  dear,  dear,  look  here !  Definite 
speech  means  clarity  of  mind.  Upon  my  word  I 
believe  you've  got  what  you  believe  to  be  a  rational 
reason  for  venturing  into  this  house,  an  entire 
stranger,  on  this  wild  scheme  of  buying  the  wool 
crop  of  an  entire  colony  on  speculation.  Bring  it 
out — I  am  prepared  —  acclimatized,  if  I  may  use 
the  word.  Why  would  you  buy  the  crop,  and  why 
would  you  make  that  sum  out  of  it?  That  is  to  say, 
what  makes  you  think  you — " 

"I  don't  think  — I  know." 

"  Definite  again.     How  do  you  know?  " 

"  Because  France  has  declared  war  against  .Ger 
many,  and  wool  has  gone  up  fourteen  per  cent,  in 
London  and  is  still  rising." 

*' Oh,  in-deed?  Now  then,  Yvegot  you!  Such 
a  thunderbolt  as  you  have  just  let  fly  ought  to  have 
made  me  jump  out  of  my  chair,  but  it  didn't  stir  me 
the  least  little  bit,  you  see.  And  for  a  very  simple 
reason:  I  have  read  the  morning  paper.  You  can 
look  at  it  if  you  want  to.  The  fastest  ship  in  the 
service  arrived  at  eleven  o'clock  last  night,  fifty 
days  out  from  London.  All  her  news  is  printed 
here.  There  are  no  war-clouds  anywhere;  and  as 
for  wool,  why,  it  is  the  low-spiritedest  commodity 
in  the  English  market.  It  is  your  turn  to  jump, 
now.  .  „  .  Well,  why  don't  you  jump?  Why  do 
you  sit  there  in  that  placid  fashion,  when — " 

"  Because  I  have  later  news." 
10. 


146  Following  the  Equator 

"Later  news?  Oh,  come  —  later  news  than  fifty 
days,  brought  steaming  hot  from  London  by  the — " 

"  My  news  is  only  ten  days  old." 

"Oh,  Mun~c/iausen,  hear  the  maniac  talk! 
Where  did  you  get  it?" 

"  Got  it  out  of  a  shark." 

"  Oh,  oh,  oh,  this  is  too  much!  Frcnt!  call  the 
police  —  bring  the  gun  —  raise  the  town!  All  the 
asylums  in  Christendom  have  broken  loose  in  the 
single  person  of — " 

"  Sit  down  !  And  collect  yourself.  Where  is  the 
use  in  getting  excited?  Am  I  excited?  There  is 
nothing  to  get  excited  about.  When  I  make  a  state 
ment  which  I  cannot  prove,  it  will  be  time  enough 
for  you  to  begin  to  offer  hospitality  to  damaging 
.  .:ncies  about  me  and  my  sanity." 

"  Oh,  a  thousand,  thousand  pardons  !  I  ought  to 
be  ashamed  of  myself,  and  I  am  ashamed  of  myself 
for  thinking  that  a  little  bit  of  a  circumstance  like 
sending  a  shark  to  England  to  fetch  back  a  market 
report — " 

"  What  does  your  middle  initial  stand  for,  sir?  " 

"Andrew.     What  are  you  writing?  " 

"  Wait  a  moment.  Proof  about  the  shark  —  and 
another  matter.  Only  ten  lines.  There  —  now  it  is 
done.  Sign  it." 

4 '  Many  thanks  —  many.  Let  me  see;  it  says  — 
it  says  —  oh,  come,  this  is  interesting  !  Why  —  why 
—  look  here  !  prove  what  you  say  here,  and  I'll  put 
up  the  money,  and  double  as  much;  if  necessary,  and 


Following  the  Equator  147 

divide  the  winnings  with  you,  half  and  half.  There, 
now — -I've  signed;  make  your  promise  good  if  you 
can.  Show  me  a  copy  of  the  London  Times  only 
ten  days  old." 

"Here  it  is — and  with  it  these  buttons  and  a  mem 
orandum  book  that  belonged  to  the  man  the  shark 
swallowed.  Swallowed  him  in  the  Thames,  without 
a  doubt;  for  you  will  notice  that  the  last  entry  in 
the  book  is  dated  '  London,'  and  is  of  the  same  date 
as  the  Times,  and  says  '^per  consequent}  ber  $rtege§er!lcU 
rung,  reife  tcfy  fyeute  nacfy  £)eutfd;)lanb  ab,  auf  bafc  icfy  mem 
Seben  auf  bem  Slltar  rnemeS  SanbeS  legen  mag'  — as  clean 
native  German  as  anybody  can  put  upon  paper, 
and  means  that  in  consequence  of  the  declaration  of 
war,  this  loyal  soul  is  leaving  for  home  to-day,  to 
fight.  And  he  did  leave,  too,  but  the  shark  had 
him  before  the  day  was  done,  poor  fellow." 

4 'And  a  pity,  too.  But  there  are  times  for  mourn 
ing,  and  we  will  attend  to  this  case  further  on;  other 
matters  are  pressing,  now.  I  will  go  down  and  set 
the  machinery  in  motion  in  a  quiet  way  and  buy  the 
crop.  It  will  cheer  the  drooping  spirits  of  the  boys, 
in  a  transitory  way.  Everything  is  transitory  in  this 
world.  Sixty  days  hence,  when  they  are  called  to 
deliver  the  goods,  they  will  think  they've  been  struck 
by  lightning.  But  there  is  a  time  for  mourning,  and 
we  will  attend  to  that  case  along  with  the  other  one. 
Come  along,  I'll  take  you  to  my  tailor.  What  did 
you  say  your  name  is?  " 

44  Cecil  Rhodes." 


148  Following  the  Equator 

11  It  is  hard  to  remember.  However,  I  think  you 
will  make  it  easier  by  and  by,  if  you  live.  There 
are  three  kinds  of  people — Commonplace  Men, 
Remarkable  Men,  and  Lunatics.  I'll  classify  you 
with  the  Remarkables,  and  take  the  chances." 

The  deal  went  through,  and  secured  to  the  young 
stranger  the  first  fortune  he  ever  pocketed. 

The  people  of  Sydney  ought  to  be  afraid  of  the 
sharks,  but  for  some  reason  they  do  not  seem  to 
be.  On  Saturdays  the  young  men  go  out  in  their 
boats,  and  sometimes  the  water  is  fairly  covered  with 
the  little  sails.  A  boat  upsets  now  and  then,  by 
accident,  a  result  of  tumultuous  skylarking;  some 
times  the  boys  upset  their  boat  for  fun  —  such  as  it 
is  —  with  sharks  visibly  waiting  around  for  just  such 
an  occurrence.  The  young  fellows  scramble  aboard 
whole  —  sometimes  —  not  always.  Tragedies  have 
happened  more  than  once.  While  I  was  in  Sydney 
it  was  reported  that  a  boy  fell  out  of  a  boat  in  the 
mouth  of  the  Paramatta  river  and  screamed  for  help 
and  a  boy  jumped  overboard  from  another  boat  to 
save  him  from  the  assembling  sharks ;  but  the  sharks 
made  swift  work  with  the  lives  of  both. 

The  government  pays  a  bounty  for  the  shark ;  to 
get  the  bounty  the  fishermen  bait  the  hook  or  the 
seine  with  agreeable  mutton ;  the  news  spreads  and 
the  sharks  come  from  all  over  the  Pacific  Ocean  to 
get  the  free  board.  In  time  the  shark  culture  will  be 
one  of  the  most  successful  things  in  the  colony. 


CHAPTER   XIV, 

We  can  secure  other  people's  approval,  if  we  do  right  and  try  hard ;  but 
our  own  is  worth  a  hundred  of  it,  and  no  way  has  been  found  out  of  securing 
that.  —  Pudd 'n/iead  Wilson'  New  Calendar. 

MY  health  had  broken  down  in  New  York  in 
May ;  it  had  remained  in  a  doubtful  but  fairish 
condition  during  a  succeeding  period  of  82  days;  it 
broke  again  on  the  Pacific.  It  broke  again  in  Syd 
ney,  but  not  until  after  I  had  had  a  good  outing, 
and  had  also  filled  my  lecture  engagements.  This 
latest  break  lost  me  the  chance  of  seeing  Queens 
land.  In  the  circumstances,  to  go  north  toward 
hotter  weather  was  not  advisable. 

So  we  moved  south  with  a  westward  slant,  17 
hours  by  rail  to  the  capital  of  the  colony  of  Vic 
toria,  Melbourne  —  that  juvenile  city  of  sixty  years, 
and  half  a  million  inhabitants.  On  the  map  the  dis 
tance  looked  small;  but  that  is  a  trouble  with  all 
divisions  of  distance  in  such  a  vast  country  as  Aus 
tralia.  The  colony  of  Victoria  itself  looks  small  on 
the  map  —  looks  like  a  county,  in  fact  —  yet  it  is 
about  as  large  as  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales 
combined,  Or,  to  get  another  focus  upon  it,  it  is 
just  80  times  as  large  as  the  State  of  Rhode  Island, 
and  one-third  as  large  as  the  State  of  Texas. 

(149) 


150  Following  the  Equator 

Outside  of  Melbourne,  Victoria  seems  to  be  owned 
by  a  handful  of  squatters,  each  with  a  Rhode  Island 
for  a  sheep  farm.  That  is  the  impression  which  one 
gathers  from  common  talk,  yet  the  wool  industry  of 
Victoria  is  by  no  means  so  great  as  that  of  New 
South  Wales.  The  climate  of  Victoria  is  favorable 
to  other  great  industries — among  others,  wheat- 
growing  and  the  making  of  wine. 

We  took  the  train  at  Sydney  at  about  four  in  the 
afternoon.  It  was  American  in  one  way,  for  we 
had  a  most  rational  sleeping  car ;  also  the  car  was 
clean  and  fine  and  new — nothing  about  it  to  sug 
gest  the  rolling  stock  of  the  continent  of  Europe. 
But  our  baggage  was  weighed,  and  extra  weight 
charged  for.  That  was  continental.  Continental 
and  troublesome.  Any  detail  of  railroading  that  is 
not  troublesome  cannot  honorably  be  described  as 
continental. 

The  tickets  were  round-trip  ones  —  to  Melbourne, 
and  clear  to  Adelaide  in  South  Australia,  and  then 
all  the  way  back  to  Sydney.  Twelve  hundred  more 
miles  than  we  really  expected  to  make ;  but  then  as 
the  round  trip  wouldn't  cost  much  more  than  the 
single  trip,  it  seemed  well  enough  to  buy  as  many 
miles  as  one  could  afford,  even  if  one  was  not  likely 
to  need  them.  A  human  being  has  a  natural  desire 
to  have  more  of  a  good  thing  than  he  needs. 

Now  comes  a  singular  thing:  the  oddest  thing, 
the  strangest  thing,  the  most  baffling  and  unaccount 
able  marvel  that  Australasia  can  show.  At  the 


Following  the  Equator  151 

frontier  between  New  South  Wales  and  Victoria  our 
multitude  of  passengers  were  routed  out  of  their 
snug  beds  by  lantern-light  in  the  morning  in  the 
biting  cold  of  a  high  altitude  to  change  cars  on  a 
road  that  has  no  break  in  it  from  Sydney  to  Mel 
bourne  !  Think  of  the  paralysis  of  intellect  that 
gave  that  idea  birth ;  imagine  the  bowlder  it  emerged 
from  on  some  petrified  legislator's  shoulders. 

It  is  a  narrow-gauge  road  to  the  frontier,  and  a 
broader  gauge  thence  to  Melbourne.  The  two 
governments  were  the  builders  of  the  road  and  are 
the  owners  of  it.  One  or  two  reasons  are  given  for 
this  curious  state  of  things.  One  is,  that  it  repre 
sents  the  jealousy  existing  between  the  colonies  — 
the  two  most  important  colonies  of  Australasia. 
What  the  other  one  Is,  I  have  forgotten.  But  it  is 
of  no  consequence.  It  could  be  but  another  effort 
to  explain  the  inexplicable. 

All  passengers  fret  at  the  double-gauge ;  all  ship 
pers  of  freight  must  of  course  fret  at  it ;  unnecessary 
expense,  delay,  and  annoyance  are  imposed  upon 
everybody  concerned,  and  no  one  is  benefited. 

Each  Australian  colony  fences  itself  off  from  its 
neighbor  with  a  custom-house.  Personally,  I  have 
no  objection,  but  it  must  be  a  good  deal  of  incon 
venience  to  the  people.  We  have  something  re 
sembling  it  here  and  there  in  America,  but  it  goes 
by  another  name.  The  large  empire  of  the  Pacific 
coast  requires  a  world  of  iron  machinery,  and  could 
manufacture  it  economically  on  the  spot  if  the 


152  Following  the  Equator 

imposts  on  foreign  iron  were  removed.  But  they 
are  not.  Protection  to  Pennsylvania  and  Alabama 
forbids  it.  The  result  to  the  Pacific  coast  is  the 
same  as  if  there  were  several  rows  of  custom-fences 
between  the  coast  and  the  East.  Iron  carted 
across  the  American  continent  at  luxurious  railway 
rates  would  be  valuable  enough  to  be  coined  when  it 
arrived. 

We  changed  cars.  This  was  at  Albury.  And  it 
was  there,  I  think,  that  the  growing  day  and  the 
early  sun  exposed  the  distant  range  called  the  Blue 
Mountains.  Accurately  named.  "My  word!"  as 
the  Australians  say,  but  it  was  a  stunning  color, 
that  blue.  Deep,  strong,  rich,  exquisite;  towering 
and  majestic  masses  of  blue  —  a  softly  luminous 
blue,  a  smouldering  blue,  as  if  vaguely  lit  by  fires 
within.  It  extinguished  the  blue  of  the  sky  —  made 
it  pallid  and  unwholesome,  whitey  and  washed-out. 
A  wonderful  color  —  just  divine. 

A  resident  told  me  that  those  were  not  moun 
tains  ;  he  said  they  were  rabbit-piles.  And  ex 
plained  that,  long  exposure  and  the  over-ripe  condi 
tion  of  the  rabbits  was  what  made  them  look  so 
blue.  This  man  may  have  been  right,  but  much 
reading  of  books  of  travel  has  made  me  distrustful 
of  gratis  information  furnished  by  unofficial  residents 
of  a  country.  The  facts  which  such  people  give  to 
travelers  are  usually  erroneous,  and  often  intemper- 
ately  so.  The  rabbit-plague  has  indeed  been  very 
bad  in  Australia,  and  it  could  account  for  one 


Following  the  Equator  153 

mountain,  but  not  for  a  mountain  range,  it  seems 
to  me.  It  is  too  large  an  order. 

We  breakfasted  at  the  station.  A  good  break 
fast,  except  the  coffee;  and  cheap.  The  govern 
ment  establishes  the  prices  and  placards  them.  The 
waiters  were  men,  I  think;  but  that  is  not  usual  in 
Australasia.  The  usual  thing  is  to  have  girls.  No, 
not  girls,  young  ladies — -generally  duchesses. 
Dress?  They  would  attract  attention  at  any  royal 
levee  in  Europe.  Even  empresses  and  queens  do 
not  dress  as  they  do.  Not  that  they  could  not 
afford  it,  perhaps,  but  they  would  not  know  how. 

All  the  pleasant  morning  we  slid  smoothly  along 
over  the  plains,  through  thin  —  not  thick  —  forests 
of  great  melancholy  gum  trees,  with  trunks  rugged 
with  curled  sheets  of  flaking  bark  —  erysipelas  con 
valescents,  so  to  speak,  shedding  their  dead  skins. 
And  all  along  were  tiny  cabins,  built  sometimes  of 
wood,  sometimes  of  gray-blue  corrugated  iron;  and 
the  doorsteps  and  fences  were  clogged  with  children 
—  rugged  little  simply-clad  chaps  that  looked  as  if 
they  had  been  imported  from  the  banks  of  the 
Mississippi  without  breaking  bulk. 

And  there  were  little  villages,  with  neat  stations 
well  placarded  with  showy  advertisements  —  mainly 
of  almost  too  self-righteous  brands  of  "  sheep-dip," 
if  that  is  the  name  —  and  I  think  it  is.  It  is  a  stuff 
like  tar,  and  is  dabbed  on  to  places  where  the 
shearer  clips  a  piece  out  of  the  sheep.  It  bars  out 
the  flies,  and  has  healing  properties,  and  a  nip  to  it 


154  Following  the  Equator 

which  makes  the  sheep  skip  like  the  cattle  on  a 
thousand  hills.  It  is  not  good  to  eat.  That  is,  it 
is  not  good  to  eat  except  when  mixed  with  railroad 
coffee.  It  improves  railroad  coffee.  Without  it 
railroad  coffee  is  too  vague.  But  with  it,  it  is  quite 
assertive  and  enthusiastic.  By  itself,  railroad  coffee 
is  too  passive ;  but  sheep-dip  makes  it  wake  up  and 
get  down  to  business.  I  wonder  where  they  get 
railroad  coffee? 

We  saw  birds,  but  not  a  kangaroo,  not  an  emu, 
not  an  ornithorhyncus,  not  a  lecturer,  not  a  native. 
Indeed,  the  land  seemed  quite  destitute  of  game. 
But  I  have  misused  the  word  native.  In  Australia 
it  is  applied  to  Australian-born  whites  only.  I 
should  have  said  that  we  saw  no  Aboriginals  —  no 
"  blackfellows."  And  to  this  day  I  have  never 
seen  one.  In  the  great  museums  you  will  find  all 
the  other  curiosities,  but  in  the  curio  of  chiefest 
interest  to  the  stranger  all  of  them  are  lacking.  We 
have  at  home  an  abundance  of  museums,  and  not  an 
American  Indian  in  them.  It  is  clearly  an  ab 
surdity,  but  it  never  struck  me  before. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

Truth  is  stranger  than  fiflion  —  to  some  people,  but  I  am  measurably  familiar 
with  it.  —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

Truth  is  stranger  than  fi6tion,  but  it  is  because  Fiction  is  obliged  to  stick  to 
possibilities;  Truth  isn't.  —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 


"^P'HE  air  was  balmy  and  delicious,  the  sunshine 
I  radiant;  it  was  a  charming  excursion.  In  the 
course  of  it  we  came  to  a  town  whose  odd  name  was 
famous  all  over  the  world  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
—  •  Wagga-Wagga.  This  was  because  the  Tichborne 
Claimant  had  kept  a  butcher-shop  there.  It  was 
out  of  the  midst  of  his  humble  collection  of  sausages 
and  tripe  that  he  soared  up  into  the  zenith  of 
notoriety  and  hung  there  in  the  wastes  of  space  a 
time,  with  the  telescopes  of  all  nations  leveled  at 
him  in  unappeasable  curiosity  —  curiosity  as  to  which 
of  the  two  long-missing  persons  he  was:  Arthur 
Orton,  the  mislaid  roustabout  of  Wapping,  or  Sir 
Roger  Tichborne,  the  lost  heir  of  a  name  and  estates 
as  old  as  English  history.  We  all  know  now,  but 
not  a  dozen  people  knew  then  ;  and  the  dozen  kept 
the  mystery  to  themselves  and  allowed  the  most 
intricate  and  fascinating  and  marvelous  real-life 
romance  that  has  ever  been  played  upon  the  world's 

(155) 


156  Following  the  Equator 

stage  to  unfold  itself  serenely,  act  by  act,  in  a 
British  court,  by  the  long  and  laborious  processes  of 
judicial  development. 

When  we  recall  the  details  of  that  great  romance 
we  marvel  to  see  what  daring  chances  truth  may 
freely  take  in  constructing  a  tale,  as  compared  with 
the  poor  little  conservative  risks  permitted  to  fiction. 
The  fiction-artist  could  achieve  no  success  with  the 
materials  of  this  splendid  Tichborne  romance.  He 
would  have  to  drop  out  the  chief  characters;  the 
public  would  say  such  people  are  impossible.  He 
would  have  to  drop  out  a  number  of  the  most 
picturesque  incidents;  the  public  would  say  such 
things  could  never  happen.  And  yet  the  chief  char 
acters  did  exist,  and  the  incidents  did  happen. 

It  cost  the  Tichborne  estates  $400,000  to  unmask 
the  Claimant  and  drive  him  out;  and  even  after  the 
exposure  multitudes  of  Englishmen  still  believed  in 
him.  It  cost  the  British  Government  another 
$400,000  to  convict  him  of  perjury;  and  after  the 
conviction  the  same  old  multitudes  still  believed  in 
him  ;  and  among  these  believers  were  many  educated 
and  intelligent  men ;  and  some  of  them  had  person 
ally  known  the  real  Sir  Roger.  The  Claimant  was 
sentenced  to  14  years'  imprisonment.  When  he 
got  out  of  prison  he  went  to  New  York  and  kept  a 
whisky  saloon  in  the  Bowery  for  a  time,  then  disap 
peared  from  view. 

He  always  claimed  to  be  Sir  Roger  Tichborne 
until  death  called  for  him.  This  was  but  a  few 


Following  the  Equator  157 

months  ago  —  not  very  much  short  of  a  generation 
since  he  left  Wagga-Wagga  to  go  and  possess  him 
self  of  his  estates.  On  his  deathbed  he  yielded  up 
his  secret,  and  confessed  in  writing  that  he  was  only 
Arthur  Orton  of  Wapping,  able  seaman  and  butcher 
—  that  and  nothing  more.  But  it  is  scarcely  to  be 
doubted  that  there  are  people  whom  even  his  dying 
confession  will  not  convince.  The  old  habit  of 
assimilating  incredibilities  must  have  made  strong 
food  a  necessity  in  their  case;  a  weaker  article 
would  probably  disagree  with  them. 

I  was  in  London  when  the  Claimant  stood  his  trial 
for  perjury.  I  attended  one  of  his  showy  evenings 
in  the  sumptuous  quarters  provided  for  him  from 
the  purses  of  his  adherents  and  well-wishers.  He 
was  in  evening  dress,  and  I  thought  him  a  rather 
fine  and  stately  creature.  There  were  about  twenty- 
five  gentlemen  present;  educated  men,  men  moving 
in  good  society,  none  of  them  commonplace;  some 
of  them  were  men  of  distinction,  none  of  them  were 
obscurities.  They  were  his  cordial  friends  and  ad 
mirers.  It  was  "  S'r  Roger,"  always  "  S'r  Roger," 
on  all  hands;  no  one  withheld  the  title,  all  turned  it 
from  the  tongue  with  unction,  and  as  if  it  tasted 
good. 

For  many  years  I  had  had  a  mystery  in  stock. 
Melbourne,  and  only  Melbourne,  could  unriddle  it 
for  me.  In  1873  I  arrived  in  London  with  my  wife 
and  young  child,  and  presently  received  a  note  from 
Naples  signed  by  a  name  not  familiar  to  me.  It 


158  Following  the  Equator 

was  not  Bascom,  and  it  was  not  Henry;  but  I  will 
call  it  Henry  Bascom  for  convenience's  sake.  This 
note,  of  about  six  lines,  was  written  on  a  strip  of 
white  paper  whose  end-edges  were  ragged.  I  came 
to  be  familiar  with  those  strips  in  later  years.  Their 
size  and  pattern  were  always  the  same.  Their  con 
tents  were  usually  to  the  same  effect:  would  I  and 
mine  come  to  the  writer's  country-place  in  England 
on  such  and  such  a  date,  by  such  and  such  a  train, 
and  stay  twelve  days  and  depart  by  such  and  such  a 
train  at  the  end  of  the  specified  time?  A  carriage 
would  meet  us  at  the  station. 

These  invitations  were  always  for  a  long  time 
ahead ;  if  we  were  in  Europe,  three  months  ahead ; 
if  we  were  in  America,  six  to  twelve  months  ahead. 
They  always  named  the  exact  date  and  train  for  the 
beginning  and  also  for  the  end  of  the  visit. 

This  first  note  invited  us  for  a  date  three  months 
in  the  future.  It  asked  us  to  arrive  by  the  4.10 
P.  M.  train  from  London,  August  6th.  The  carriage 
would  be  waiting.  The  carriage  would  take  us  away 
seven  days  later — -train  specified.  And  there  were 
these  words:  "  Speak  to  Tom  Hughes." 

I  showed  the  note  to  the  author  of  "  Tom  Brown 
at  Rugby,"  and  he  said: 

"  Accept,  and  be  thankful." 

He  described  Mr.  Bascom  as  being  a  man  of 
genius,  a  man  of  fine  attainments,  a  choice  man  in 
every  way,  a  rare  and  beautiful  character.  He  said 
that  Bascom  Hall  was  a  particularly  fine  example  of 


Following  the  Equator  159 

the  stately  manorial  mansion  of  Elizabeth's  days, 
and  that  it  was  a  house  worth  going  a  long  way  to 
see  —  like  Knowle;  that  Mr.  B.  was  of  a  soc>al  dis 
position,  liked  the  company  of  agreeable  people, 
and  always  had  samples  of  the  sort  coming  and 
going. 

We  paid  the  visit.  We  paid  others ,  in  later  years 
—  the  last  one  in  1879.  Soon  after  that  Mr.  Bascom 
started  on  a  voyage  around  the  world  in  a  steam 
yacht  —  a  long  and  leisurely  trip,  for  he  was  making 
collections,  in  all  lands,  of  birds,  butterflies,  and 
such  things. 

The  day  that  President  Garfield  was  shot  by  the 
assassin  Guiteau,  we  were  at  a  little  watering  place 
on  Long  Island  Sound ;  and  in  the  mail  matter  of 
that  day  came  a  letter  with  the  Melbourne  postmark 
on  it.  It  was  for  my  wife,  but  I  recognized  Mr. 
Bascom' s  handwriting  on  the  envelope,  and  opened 
it.  It  was  the  usual  note  —  as  to  paucity  of  lines  — 
and  was  written  on  the  customary  strip  of  paper; 
but  there  was  nothing  usual  about  the  contents. 
The  note  informed  my  wife  that  if  it  would  be  any 
assuagement  of  her  grief  to  know  that  her  husband's 
lecture-tour  in  Australia  was  a  satisfactory  venture 
from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  he,  the  writer,  could 
testify  that  such  was  the  case;  also,  that  her  hus 
band's  untimely  death  had  been  mourned  by  all 
classes,  as  she  would  already  know  by  the  press 
telegrams,  long  before  the  reception  of  this  note; 
that  the  funeral  was  attended  by  the  officials  of  the 


160  Following  the  Equator 

colonial  and  city  governments ;  and  that  while  he, 
the  writer,  her  friend  and  mine,  had  not  reached 
Melbourne  in  time  to  see  the  body,  he  had  at  least 
had  the  sad  privilege  of  acting  as  one  of  the  pa11- 
bearers.  Signed,  "  Henry  Bascom." 

My  first  thought  was,  why  didn't  he  have  the 
coffin  opened?  He  would  have  seen  that  the  corpse 
was  an  impostor,  and  he  could  have  gone  right 
ahead  and  dried  up  the  most  of  those  tears,  and  com 
forted  those  sorrowing  governments,  and  sold  the 
remains  and  sent  me  the  money. 

I  did  nothing  about  the  matter.  I  had  set  the 
law  after  living  lecture-doubles  of  mine  a  couple  of 
times  in  America,  and  the  law  had  not  been  able  to 
catch  them ;  others  in  my  trade  had  tried  to  catch 
their  impostor-doubles  and  had  failed.  Then  where 
was  the  use  in  harrying  a  ghost?  Ncne  —  and  so  I 
did  not  disturb  it.  I  had  a  curiosity  to  know  about 
that  man's  lecture-tour  and  last  moments,  but  that 
could  wait.  When  I  should  see  Mr.  Bascom  he  would 
tell  me  all  about  it.  But  he  passed  from  life,  and  I 
never  saw  him  again  My  curiosity  faded  away. 

However,  when  I  found  that  I  was  going  to  Aus 
tralia  it  revived.  And  naturally:  for  if  the  people 
should  say  that  I  was  a  dull,  poor  thing  compared 
to  what  I  was  before  I  died,  it  would  have  a  bad 
effect  on  business.  Well,  to  my  surprise  the  Sydney 
journalists  had  never  heard  of  that  impostor !  I 
pressed  them,  but  they  were  firm  —  they  had  never 
heard  of  him,  and  didn't  believe  in  him. 


Following  the  Equator  161 

I  could  not  understand  it ;  still,  I  thought  it  would 
all  come  right  in  Melbourne.  The  government 
would  remember;  and  the  other  mourners.  At  the 
supper  of  the  Institute  of  Journalists  I  should  find 
out  all  about  the  matter.  But  no  —  it  turned  out 
that  they  had  never  heard  of  it. 

So  my  mystery  was  a  mystery  still.  It  was  a 
great  disappointment.  I  believed  it  would  never  be 
cleared  up  —  in  this  life  —  so  I  dropped  it  out  of 
my  mind. 

But  at  last!   just  when  I  was  least  expecting  it  — 

However,  this  is  not  the  place  for  the  rest  of  it ;  I 
shall  come  to  the  matter  again,  in  a  far-distant 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  XVI. 

There  13  a  Moral  Sense,  and  there  is  an  Immoral  Sense.    History  shows  UR 
that  the  Moral  Sense  enables  us  to  perceive  morality  and  how  to  avoid  it,  and 
that  the  Immoral  Sense  enables  us  to  perceive  immorality  and  how  to  enjoy  it. 
— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

MELBOURNE  spreads  around  over  an  immense 
a^ea  of  ground.  It  is  a  stately  city  architec 
turally  as  well  as  in  magnitude.  It  has  an  elaborate 
system  of  cable-car  service;  it  has  museums,  and 
colleges,  and  schools,  and  public  gardens,  and  elec 
tricity,  and  gas,  and  libraries,  and  theaters,  and 
mining  centers,  and  wool  centers,  and  centers  of  the 
arts  and  sciences,  and  boards  of  trade,  and  ships, 
and  railroads,  and  a  harbor,  and  social  clubs,  and 
journalistic  clubs,  and  racing  clubs,  and  a  squatter 
club  sumptuously  housed  and  appointed,  and  as 
many  churches  and  banks  as  can  make  a  living.  In 
a  word,  it  is  equipped  with  everything  that  goes  to 
make  the  modern  great  city.  It  is  the  largest  city 
of  Australasia,  and  fills  the  post  with  honor  and 
credit.  It  has  one  specialty;  this  must  not  be 
jumbled  in  with  those  other  things.  It  is  the  mitred 
Metropolitan  of  the  Horse-Racing  Cult.  Its  race- 
ground  is  the  Mecca  of  Australasia.  On  the  great 


Following  the  Equator  163 

annual  day  of  sacrifice  —  the  5th  of  November,  Guy 
Fawkes's  Day —  business  is  suspended  over  a  stretch 
of  land  and  sea  as  wide  as  from  New  York  to  San 
Francisco,  and  deeper  than  from  the  northern  lakes 
to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico;  and  every  man  and  woman, 
of  high  degree  or  low,  who  can  afford  the  expense, 
put  away  their  other  duties  and  come.  They  begin 
to  swarm  in  by  ship  and  rail  a  fortnight  before  the 
day,  and  they  swarm  thicker  and  thicker  day  after 
day,  until  all  the  vehicles  of  transportation  are  taxed 
to  their  uttermost  to  meet  the  demands  of  the  occa 
sion,  and  all  hotels  and  lodgings  are  bulging  outward 
because  of  the  pressure  from  within.  They  come  a 
hundred  thousand  strong,  as  all  the  best  authorities 
say,  and  they  pack  the  spacious  grounds  and  grand 
stands  and  make  a  spectacle  such  as  is  never  to  be 
seen  in  Australasia  elsewhere. 

It  is  the  "  Melbourne  Cup"  that  brings  this 
multitude  together.  Their  clothes  have  been  ordered 
long  ago,  at  unlimited  cost,  and  without  bounds  as 
to  beauty  and  magnificence,  and  have  been  kept  in 
concealment  until  now,  for  unto  this  day  are  they 
consecrate.  I  am  speaking  of  the  ladies'  clothes; 
but  one  might  know  that. 

And  so  the  grand-stands  make  a  brilliant  and 
wonderful  spectacle,  a  delirium  of  color,  a  vision  of 
beauty.  The  champagne  flows,  everybody  is  viva 
cious,  excited,  happy;  everybody  bets,  and  gloves 
and  fortunes  change  hands  right  along,  all  the  time. 
Day  after  day  the  races  go  on,  and  the  fun  and  the 
K* 


164  Following  the  Equator 

excitement  are  kept  at  white  heat;  and  when  each 
day  is  done,  the  people  dance  all  night  so  as  to  be 
fresh  for  the  race  in  the  morning.  And  at  the  end 
of  the  great  week  the  swarms  secure  lodgings  and 
transportation  for  next  year,  then  flock  away  to 
their  remote  homes  and  count  their  gains  and  losses, 
and  order  next  year's  Cup-clothes,  and  then  lie 
down  and  sleep  two  weeks,  and  get  up  sorry  to  re 
flect  that  a  whole  year  must  be  put  in  somehow  or 
other  before  they  can  be  wholly  happy  again. 

The  Melbourne  Cup  is  the  Australasian  National 
Day.  It  would  be  difficult  to  overstate  its  impor 
tance.  It  overshadows  all  other  holidays  and  spe 
cialized  days  of  whatever  sort  in  that  congeries  of 
colonies.  Overshadows  them?  I  might  almost  say 
it  blots  them  out.  Each  of  them  gets  attention,  but 
not  everybody's;  each  of  them  evokes  interest,  but 
not  everybody's;  each  of  them  rouses  enthusiasm, 
but  not  everybody's;  in  each  case  a  part  of  the 
attention,  interest,  and  enthusiasm  is  a  matter  of 
habit  and  custom,  and  another  part  of  it  is  official 
and  perfunctory.  Cup  Day,  and  Cup  Day  only, 
commands  an  attention,  an  interest,  and  an  enthu 
siasm  which  are  universal  —  and  spontaneous,  not 
perfunctory.  Cup  Day  is  supreme  —  it  has  no 
rival.  I  can  call  to  mind  no  specialized  annual  day, 
in  any  country,  which  can  be  named  by  that  large 
name  —  Supreme.  I  can  call  to  mind  no  special 
ized  annual  day,  in  any  country,  whose  approach 
fires  the  whole  land  with  a  conflagration  of  conversa- 


Following  the  Equator  165 

tion  and  preparation  and  anticipation  and  jubilation. 
No  day  save  this  one ;  but  this  one  does  it. 

In  America  we  have  no  annual  supreme  day;  no 
day  whose  approach  makes  the  whole  nation  glad. 
We  have  the  Fourth  of  July,  and  Christmas,  and 
Thanksgiving.  Neither  of  them  can  claim  the 
primacy;  neither  of  them  can  arouse  an  enthusiasm 
which  comes  near  to  being  universal.  Eight  grown 
Americans  out  of  ten  dread  the  coming  of  the 
Fourth,  with  its  pandemonium  and  its  perils,  and 
they  rejoice  when  it  is  gone  —  if  still  alive.  The 
approach  of  Christmas  brings  harassment  and  dread 
to  many  excellent  people.  They  have  to  buy  a 
cart-load  of  presents,  and  they  never  know  what  to 
buy  to  hit  the  various  tastes;  they  put  in  three 
weeks  of  hard  and  anxious  work,  and  when  Christ 
mas  morning  comes  they  are  so  dissatisfied  with  the 
result,  and  so  disappointed  that  they  want  to  sit 
down  and  cry.  Then  they  give  thanks  that  Christ 
mas  comes  but  once  a  year.  The  observance  of 
Thanksgiving  Day  —  as  a  function  —  has  become 
general  of  late  years.  The  Thankfulness  is  not  so 
general.  This  is  natural.  Two-thirds  of  the  nation 
have  always  had  hard  luck  and  a  hard  time  during 
the  year,  and  this  has  a  calming  effect  upon  their 
enthusiasm. 

We  have  a  supreme  day  — •  a  sweeping  and  tre 
mendous  and  tumultuous  day,  a  day  which  com 
mands  an  absolute  universality  of  interest  and  excite 
ment;  but  it  is  not  annual.  It  comes  but  once  in 


166  Following  the  Equator 

four  years;  therefore  it  cannot  count  as  a  rival  o! 
the  Melbourne  Cup. 

In  Great  Britain  and  Ireland  they  have  two  great 
days — Christmas  and  the  Queen's  birthday.  But 
they  are  equally  popular ;  there  is  no  supremacy. 

I  think  it  must  be  conceded  that  the  position  of 
the  Australasian  Day  is  unique,  solitary,  unfellowed ; 
and  likely  to  hold  that  high  place  a  long  time. 

The  things  which  interest  us  when  we  travel 
are,  first,  the  people;  next,  the  novelties;  and 
finally  the  history  of  the  places  and  countries 
visited.  Novelties  are  rare  in  cities  which  represent 
the  most  advanced  civilization  of  the  modern  day. 
When  one  is  familiar  with  such  cities  in  the  other 
parts  of  the  world  he  is  in  effect  familiar  with  the 
cities  of  Australasia.  The  outside  aspects  will  fur 
nish  little  that  is  new.  There  will  be  new  names, 
but  the  things  which  they  represent  will  sometimes 
be  found  to  be  less  new  than  their  names.  There 
may  be  shades  of  difference,  but  these  can  easily  be 
too  fine  for  detection  by  the  incompetent  eye  of  the 
passing  stranger.  In  the  larrikin  he  will  not  be  able 
to  discover  a  new  species,  but  only  an  old  one  met 
elsewhere,  and  variously  called  loafer,  rough,  tough, 
bummer,  or  blatherskite,  according  to  his  geograph 
ical  distribution.  The  larrikin  differs  by  a  shade 
from  those  others,  in  that  he  is  more  sociable  toward 
the  stranger  than  they,  more  kindly  disposed,  more 
hospitable,  more  hearty,  more  friendly.  At  least  it 
seemed  so  to  me,  and  I  had  opportunity  to  observe. 


Following  the  Equator  167 

In  Sydney,  at  least.  In  Melbourne  I  had  to  drive 
to  and  from  the  lecture-theater,  but  in  Sydney  I  was 
able  to  walk  both  ways,  and  did  it.  Every  night, 
on  my  way  home  at  ten,  or  a  quarter  past,  I  found 
the  larrikin  grouped  in  considerable  force  at  several 
of  the  street  corners,  and  he  always  gave  me  this 
pleasant  salutation : 

"Hello,  Mark!" 

11  Here's  to  you,  old  chap!" 

*  *  Say  —  Mark !  —  is  he  dead  ?  " —  a  reference  to  a 
passage  in  some  book  of  mine,  though  I  did  not 
detect,  at  that  time,  that  that  was  its  source.  And 
I  didn't  detect  it  afterward  in  Melbourne,  when  I 
came  on  the  stage  for  the  first  time,  and  the  same 
question  was  dropped  down  upon  me  from  the  dizzy 
height  of  the  gallery.  It  is  always  difficult  to  answer 
a  sudden  inquiry  like  that,  when  you  have  come 
unprepared  and  don't  know  what  it  means.  I  will 
remark  here  —  if  it  is  not  an  indecorum  —  that  the 
welcome  which  an  American  lecturer  gets  from  a 
British  colonial  audience  is  a  thing  which  will  move 
him  to  his  deepest  deeps,  and  veil  his  sight  and 
break  his  voice.  And  from  Winnipeg  to  Africa, 
experience  will  teach  him  nothing;  he  will  never 
learn  to  expect  it,  it  will  catch  him  as  a  surprise 
each  time.  The  war-cloud  hanging  black  over  Eng 
land  and  America  made  no  trouble  for  me.  I  was 
a  prospective  prisoner  of  war,  but  at  dinners,  sup 
pers,  on  the  platform,  and  elsewhere,  there  was 
never  anything  to  remind  me  of  it.  This  was  hos- 


1  '  i  •• 

168  Following  the  Equator 

pitality  of  the  right  metal,  and  would  have  been 
prominently  lacking  in  some  countries,  in  the  cir 
cumstances. 

And  speaking  of  the  war-flurry,  it  seemed  to  me 
to  bring  to  light  the  unexpected,  in  a  detail  or  two. 
It  seemed  to  relegate  the  war-talk  to  the  politicians 
on  both  sides  of  the  water;  whereas  whenever  a 
prospective  war  between  two  nations  had  been  in  the 
air  theretofore,  the  public  had  done  most  of  the 
talking  and  the  bitterest.  The  attitude  of  the  news 
papers  was  new  also.  I  speak  of  those  of  Austra 
lasia  and  India,  for  I  had  access  to  those  only. 
They  treated  the  subject  argumentatively  and  with 
dignity,  not  with  spite  and  anger.  That  was  a  new 
spirit,  too,  and  not  learned  of  the  French  and  Ger 
man  press,  either  before  Sedan  or  since.  I  heard 
many  public  speeches,  and  they  reflected  the 
moderation  of  the  journals.  The  outlook  is  that 
the  English-speaking  race  will  dominate  the  earth  a 
hundred  years  from  now,  if  its  sections  do  not  get 
to  fighting  each  other.  It  would  be  a  pity  to  spoil 
that  prospect  by  baffling  and  retarding  wars  when 
arbitration  would  settle  their  differences  so  much 
better  and  also  so  much  more  definitely. 

No,  as  I  have  suggested,  novelties  are  rare  in  the 
great  capitals  of  modern  times.  Even  the  wool  ex 
change  in  Melbourne  could  not  be  told  from  the 
familiar  stock  exchange  of  other  countries.  Wool 
brokers  are  just  like  stockbrokers ;  they  all  bounce 
from  their  seats  and  put  up  their  hands  and  yell  in 


Following  the  Equator  169 

unison  —  no  stranger  can  tell  what  —  and  the  presi 
dent  calmly  says — "Sold  to  Smith  &  Co.,  threp- 
pence  farthing — next!" — when  probably  nothing 
of  the  kind  happened;  for  how  should  he  know? 

In  the  museums  you  will  find  acres  of  the  most 
strange  and  fascinating  things ;  but  all  museums  are 
fascinating,  and  they  do  so  tire  your  eyes,  and  break 
your  back,  and  burn  out  your  vitalities  with  their 
consuming  interest.  You  always  say  you  will  never 
go  again,  but  you  do  go.  The  palaces  of  the  rich, 
in  Melbourne,  are  much  like  the  palaces  of  the  rich 
in  America,  and  the  life  in  them  is  the  same ;  but 
there  the  resemblance  ends.  The  grounds  surround 
ing  the  American  palace  are  not  often  large,  and  not 
often  beautiful,  but  in  the  Melbourne  case  the 
grounds  are  often  ducally  spacious,  and  the  climate 
and  the  gardeners  together  make  them  as  beautiful 
as  a  dream.  It  is  said  that  some  of  the  country 
seats  have  grounds  —  domains  —  about  them  which 
rival  in  charm  and  magnitude  those  which  surround 
the  country  mansion  of  an  English  lord ;  but  I  was 
not  out  in  the  country;  I  had  my  hands  full  in  town. 

And  what  was  the  origin  of  this  majestic  city  and 
its  efflorescence  of  palatial  town  houses  and  country 
seats?  Its  first  brick  was  laid  and  its  first  house 
built  by  a  passing  convict.  Australian  history  is 
almost  always  picturesque;  indeed,  it  is  so  curious 
and  strange,  that  it  is  itself  the  chiefest  novelty  the 
country  has  to  offer,  and  so  it  pushes  the  other 
novelties  into  second  and  third  place.  It  does  not 


170  Following  the  Equator 

read  like  history,  but  like  the  most  beautiful  lies. 
And  all  of  a  fresh  new  sort,  no  moldy  old  stale 
ones.  It  is  full  of  surprises,  and  adventures,  and 
incongruities,  and  contradictions,  and  incredibilities; 
but  they  are  all  true,  they  all  happened. 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

The  English  are  mentioned  in  the  Bible:  Blessed  are  the  meek,  for  they  shall 
inherit  the  earth.  — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar, 

WHEN  we  consider  the  immensity  of  the  British 
Empire  in  territory,  population,  and  trade,  it 
requires  a  stern  exercise  of  faith  to  believe  in  the 
figures  which  represent  Australasia's  contribution  to 
the  Empire's  commercial  grandeur.  As  compared 
with  the  landed  estate  of  the  British  Empire,  the 
landed  estate  dominated  by  any  other  Power  except 
one —  Russia —  is  not  very  impressive  for  size.  My 
authorities  make  the  British  Empire  not  much  short 
of  a  fourth  larger  than  the  Russian  Empire. 
Roughly  proportioned,  if  you  will  allow  your  entire 
hand  to  represent  the  British  Empire,  you  may  then 
cut  off  the  fingers  a  trifle  above  the  middle  joint  of 
the  middle  finger,  and  what  is  left  of  the  hand  will 
represent  Russia.  The  populations  ruled  by  Great 
Britain  and  China  are  about  the  same  —  400,000,000 
each.  No  other  Power  approaches  these  figures. 
Even  Russia  is  left  far  behind. 

The    population    of     Australasia  —  4,000,000  — 
sinks  into  nothingness,  and  is  lost  from  sight  in  that 


172  Following  the  Equator 

British  ocean  of  400,000,000.  Yet  the  statistics 
indicate  that  it  rises  again  and  shows  up  very  con 
spicuously  when  its  share  of  the  Empire's  commerce 
is  the  matter  under  consideration.  The  value  of 
England's  annual  exports  and  imports  is  stated  at 
three  billions  of  dollars,*  arid  it  is  claimed  that  more 
than  one-tenth  of  this  great  aggregate  is  represented 
by  Australasia's  exports  to  England  and  imports  from 
England.f  In  addition  to  this,  Australasia  does  a 
trade  with  countries  other  than  England,  amounting 
to  a  hundred  million  dollars  a  year,  and  a  domestic 
intercolonial  trade  amounting  to  a  hundred  and  fifty 
millions.f 

In  round  numbers  the  4,000,000  buy  and  sell 
about  $600,000,000  worth  of  goods  a  year.  It  is 
claimed  that  about  half  of  this  represents  commodi 
ties  of  Australasian  production.  The  products  ex 
ported  annually  by  India  are  worth  a  trifle  over 
$500,000,000.*  Now,  here  are  some  faith-straining 
figures : 

Indian  production  (300,000,000  population), 
$500,000,000. 

Australasian  production  (4,000,000  population), 
$300,000,000. 

That  is   to  say,  the  product  of  the  individual  In 
dian,  annually  (for  export  some  whither),  is  worth 
$1.75;  that  of  the  individual  Australasian  (for  ex 
port  some  whither),  $75  !     Or,  to  put  it  in  another 
way,  the  Indian   family  of   man  and   wife  and  three 

*New  South  Wales  Blue  Book.  tD.  M.  Luckie. 


Following  the  Equator 


173 


12*' 


174  Following  the  Equator 

children  sends  away  an  annual  result  worth  $8.75, 
while  the  Australasian  family  sends  away  $375 
worth. 

There  are  trustworthy  statistics  furnished  by  Sir 
Richard  Temple  and  others,  which  show  that  the 
individual  Indian's  whole  annual  product,  both  for 
export  and  home  use,  is  worth  in  gold  only  $7.50; 
or»  $37-5°  f°r  the  family-aggregate.  Ciphered  out 
on  a  like  ratio  of  multiplication,  the  Australasian 
family's  aggregate  production  would  be  nearly 
$1,600.  Truly,  nothing  is  so  astonishing  as  figures, 
if  they  once  get  started. 

We  left  Melbourne  by  rail  for  Adelaide,  the  capi 
tal  of  the  vast  Province  of  South  Australia  —  a 
seventeen-hour  excursion.  On  the  train  we  found 
several  Sydney  friends ;  among  them  a  Judge  who 
was  going  out  on  circuit,  and  was  going  to  hold 
court  at  Broken  Hill,  where  the  celebrated  silver 
mine  is.  It  seemed  a  curious  road  to  take  to  get  to 
that  region.  Broken  Hill  is  close  to  the  western 
border  of  New  South  Wales,  and  Sydney  is  on  the 
eastern  border.  A  fairly  straight  line,  700  miles 
long,  drawn  westward  from  Sydney,  would  strike 
Broken  Hill,  just  as  a  somewhat  shorter  one  drawn 
west  from  Boston  would  strike  Buffalo.  The  way 
the  Judge  was  traveling  would  carry  him  over  2,000 
miles  by  rail,  he  said;  southwest  from  Sydney  down 
to  Melbourne,  then  northward  up  to  Adelaide,  then 
a  cant  back  northeastward  and  over  the  border  into 
New  South  Wales  once  more  —  to  Broken  Hill.  It 


Following  the  Equator  175 

was  like  going  from  Boston  southwest  to  Richmond 
Virginia,  then  northwest  up  to  Erie,  Pennsylvania, 
then  a  cant  back  northeast  and  over  the  border  —  to 
Buffalo,  New  York. 

But  the  explanation  was  simple.  Years  ago  the 
fabulously  rich  silver  discovery  at  Broken  Hill  burst 
suddenly  upon  an  unexpectant  world.  Its  stocks 
started  at  shillings,  and  went  by  leaps  and  bounds 
to  the  most  fanciful  figures.  It  was  one  of  those 
cases  where  the  cook  puts  a  month's  wages  into 
shares,  and  comes  next  month  and  buys  your  house 
at  your  own  price,  and  moves  into  it  herself;  where 
the  coachman  takes  a  few  shares,  and  next  month 
sets  up  a  bank;  and  where  the  common  sailor  in 
vests  the  price  of  a  spree,  and  the  next  month  buys 
out  the  steamship  company  and  goes  into  business 
on  his  own  hook.  In  a  word,  it  was  one  of  those 
excitements  which  bring  multitudes  of  people  to  a 
common  center  with  a  rush,  and  whose  needs  must 
be  supplied,  and  at  once.  Adelaide  was  close  by, 
Sydney  was  far  away.  Adelaide  threw  a  short  rail 
way  across  the  border  before  Sydney  had  time  to 
arrange  for  a  long  one ;  it  was  not  worth  while  for 
Sydney  to  arrange  at  all.  The  whole  vast  trade- 
profit  of  Broken  Hill  fell  into  Adelaide's  hands, 
irrevocably.  New  South  Wales  furnishes  law  for 
Broken  Hill  and  sends  her  Judges  2,000  miles  — 
mainly  through  alien  countries  —  to  administer  it, 
but  Adelaide  takes  the  dividends  and  makes  no 
moan. 


^    (V^ 

176  Following  the  Equator 

We  started  at  4.20  in  the  afternoon,  and  moved 
across  level  plains  until  night.  In  the  morning  we 
had  a  stretch  of  "scrub"  country  —  the  kind  of 
thing  which  is  so  useful  to  the  Australian  novelist. 
In  the  scrub  the  hostile  aboriginal  lurks,  and  flits 
mysteriously  about,  slipping  out  from  time  to  time 
to  surprise  and  slaughter  the  settler;  then  slipping 
back  again,  and  leaving  no  track  that  the  white  man 
can  follow.  In  the  scrub  the  novelist's  heroine  gets 
lost,  search  fails  of  result;  she  wanders  here  and 
there,  and  finally  sinks  down  exhausted  and  uncon 
scious,  and  the  searchers  pass  within  a  yard  or  two 
of  her,  not  suspecting  that  she  is  near,  and  by  and 
by  some  rambler  find  her  bones  and  the  pathetic 
diary  which  she  had  scribbled  with  her  failing  hand 
and  left  behind.  Nobody  can  find  a  lost  heroine  in 
the  scrub  but  the  aboriginal  "  tracker,"  and  he  will 
not  lend  himself  to  the  scheme  if  it  will  interfere 
with  the  novelist's  plot.  The  scrub  stretches  miles 
and  miles  in  all  directions,  and  looks  like  a  level 
roof  of  bush-tops  without  a  break  or  a  crack  in  it  — 
as  seamless  as  a  blanket,  to  all  appearance.  One 
might  as  well  walk  under  water  and  hope  to  guess 
out  a  route  and  stick  to  it,  I  should  think.  Yet  it  is 
claimed  that  the  aboriginal  ' '  tracker ' '  was  able  to 
hunt  out  people  lost  in  the  scrub.  Also  in  the 
"  bush  "  ;  also  in  the  desert;  and  even  follow  them 
over  patches  of  bare  rocks  and  over  alluvial  ground 
which  had  to  all  appearance  been  washed  clear  of 
footprints. 


Following  the  Equator  177 

From  reading  Australian  books  and  talking  with 
the  people,  I  became  convinced  that  the  aboriginal 
tracker's  performances  evince  a  craft,  a  penetration, 
a  luminous  sagacity,  and  a  minuteness  and  accuracy 
of  observation  in  the  matter  of  detective-work  not 
found  in  nearly  so  remarkable  a  degree  in  any  other 
people,  white  or  colored.  In  an  official  account  of 
the  blacks  of  Australia  published  by  the  government 
of  Victoria,  one  reads  that  the  aboriginal  not  only 
notices  the  faint  marks  left  on  the  bark  of  a  tree  by 
the  claws  of  a  climbing  opossum,  but  knows  in  some 
way  or  other  whether  the  marks  were  made  to-day 
or  yesterday. 

And  there  is  the  case,  on  record,  where  A.,  a 
settler,  makes  a  bet  with  B.,  that  B.  may  lose  a  cow 
as  effectually  as  he  can,  and  A.  will  produce  an 
aboriginal  who  will  find  her.  B.  selects  a  cow  and 
lets  the  tracker  see  the  cow's  footprint,  then  be  put 
under  guard.  B.  then  drives  the  cow  a  few  miles 
over  a  course  which  drifts  in  all  directions,  and  fre 
quently  doubles  back  upon  itself;  and  he  selects 
difficult  ground  all  the  time,  and  once  or  twice  ever/ 
drives  the  cow  through  herds  of  other  cows,  and 
mingles  her  tracks  in  the  wide  confusion  of  theirs. 
He  finally  brings  his  cow  home;  the  aboriginal  is 
set  at  liberty,  and  at  once  moves  around  in  a  great 
circle,  examining  all  cow-tracks  until  he  finds  the 
one  he  is  after*  then  sets  off  and  follows  it  through 
out  its  erratic  course,  and  ultimately  tracks  it  to  the 
stable  where  B.  has  hidden  the  cow.  Now  wherein 
12, 


178  Following  the  Equator 

does  one  cow-track  differ  from  another?  There  must 
be  a  difference,  or  the  tracker  could  not  have  per 
formed  the  feat;  a  difference  minute,  shadowy,  and 
not  detectible  by  you  or  me,  or  by  the  late  Sherlock 
Holmes,  and  yet  discernible  by  a  member  of  a  race 
charged  by  some  people  with  occupying  the  bottom 
place  in  the  gradations  of  human  intelligence. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

It  is  easier  to  stay  out  than  get  out.—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  train  was  now  exploring  a  beautiful  hill 
country,  and  went  twisting  in  and  out  through 
lovely  little  green  valleys.  There  were  several 
varieties  of  gum-trees;  among  them  many  giants. 
Some  of  them  were  bodied  and  barked  like  the 
sycamore ;  some  were  of  fantastic  aspect,  and  re 
minded  one  of  the  quaint  apple  trees  in  Japanese 
pictures.  And  there  was  one  peculiarly  beautiful 
tree  whose  name  and  breed  I  did  not  know.  The 
foliage  seemed  to  consist  of  big  bunches  of  pine- 
spines,  the  lower  half  of  each  bunch  a  rich  brown  or 
old-gold  color,  the  upper  half  a  most  vivid  and 
strenuous  and  shouting  green.  The  effect  was  alto 
gether  bewitching.  The  tree  was  apparently  rare. 
I  should  say  that  the  first  and  last  samples  of  it  seen 
by  us  were  not  more  than  half  an  hour  apart. 
There  was  another  tree  of  striking  aspect,  a  kind  of 
pine,  we  were  told.  Its  foliage  was  as  fine  as  hair, 
apparently,  and  its  mass  sphered  itself  above  the 
naked  straight  stem  like  an  explosion  of  misty 
smoke.  It  was  not  a  sociable  sort;  it  did  not  gather 
in  groups  or  couples,  but  each  individual  stood  far 

1»  (I7Q) 


180  Following  the  Equator 

away  from  its  nearest  neighbor.  It  scattered  itself 
in  this  spacious  and  exclusive  fashion  about  the 
slopes  of  swelling  grassy  great  knolls,  and  stood  in 
the  full  flood  of  the  wonderful  sunshine ;  and  as  far 
as  you  could  see  the  tree  itself  you  could  also  see 
the  ink-black  blot  of  its  shadow  on  the  shining  green 
carpet  at  its  feet. 

On  some  part  of  this  railway  journey  we  saw 
gorse  and  broom  —  importations  from  England  — 
and  a  gentleman  who  carne  into  our  compartment 
on  a  visit  tried  to  tell  me  which  was  which ;  but  as 
he  didn't  know,  he  had  difficulty.  He  said  he  was 
ashamed  of  his  ignorance,  but  that  he  had  never  been 
confronted  with  the  question  before  during  the  fifty 
years  and  more  that  he  had  spent  in  Australia,  and 
so  he  had  never  happened  to  get  interested  in  the 
matter.  But  there  was  no  need  to  be  ashamed. 
The  most  of  us  have  his  defect.  We  take  a  natural 
interest  in  novelties,  but  it  is  against  nature  to  take 
an  interest  in  familiar  things.  The  gorse  and  the 
broom  were  a  fine  accent  in  the  landscape.  Here 
and  there  they  burst  out  in  sudden  conflagrations  of 
vivid  yellow  against  a  background  of  sober  or  sombre 
color,  with  a  so  startling  effect  as  to  make  a  body 
catch  his  breath  with  the  happy  surprise  of  it.  And 
then  there  was  the  wattle,  a  native  bush  or  tree,  an 
inspiring  cloud  of  sumptuous  yellow  bloom.  It  is  a 
favorite  with  the  Australians,  and  has  a  fine  fra 
grance,  a  quality  usually  wanting  in  Australian 
blossoms. 


Following  the  Equator  181 

The  gentleman  who  enriched  me  with  the  poverty 
of  his  information  about  the  gorse  and  the  broom 
told  me  that  he  came  out  from  England  a  youth  of 
twenty  and  entered  the  Province  of  South  Australia 
with  thirty-six  shillings  in  his  pocket — an  adven 
turer  without  trade,  profession,  or  friends,  but  with 
a  clearly-defined  purpose  in  his  head :  he  would 
stay  until  he  was  worth  £200,  then  go  back  home. 
He  would  allow  himself  five  years  for  the  accumula 
tion  of  this  fortune. 

*' That  was  more  than  fifty  years  ago,"  said  he. 
"  And  here  I  am,  yet." 

As  he  went  out  at  the  door  he  met  a  friend,  and 
turned  and  introduced  him  to  me,  and  the  friend 
and  I  had  a  talk  and  a  smoke.  I  spoke  of  the  pre 
vious  conversation  and  said  there  was  something 
very  pathetic  about  this  half  century  of  exile,  and 
that  I  wished  the  £200  scheme  had  succeeded. 

"  With  him  ?  Oh,  it  did.  It's  not  so  sad  a  case. 
He  is  modest,  and  he  left  out  some  of  the  particu 
lars.  The  lad  reached  South  Australia  just  in  time 
to  help  discover  the  Burra-Burra  copper  mines. 
They  turned  out  £700, ooo  in  the  first  three  years 
Up  to  now  they  have  yielded  ^20,000,000.  He 
has  had  his  share,  Before  that  boy  had  been  in  the 
country  two  years  he  could  have  gone  home  and 
bought  a  village ;  he  could  go  now  and  buy  a  city, 
I  think.  No,  there  is  nothing  very  pathetic  about 
his  case.  He  and  his  copper  arrived  at  just  a  handy 
time  to  save  South  Australia.  It  had  got  mashed 


182  Following  the  Equator 

pretty  flat  under  the  collapse  of  a  land  boom  a  while 
before.'1 

There  it  is  again;  picturesque  history  —  Austra 
lia's  specialty.  In  1829  South  Australia  hadn't  a 
white  man  in  it.  In  1836  the  British  Parliament 
erected  it  —  still  a  solitude  —  into  a  Province,  and 
gave  it  a  governor  and  other  governmental  machin 
ery.  Speculators  took  hold,  now,  and  inaugurated 
a  vast  land  scheme,  and  invited  immigration,  en 
couraging  it  with  lurid  promises  of  sudden  wealth. 
It  was  well  worked  in  London ;  and  bishops,  states 
men,  and  all  sorts  of  people  made  a  rush  for  the 
land  company's  shares.  Immigrants  soon  began  to 
pour  into  the  region  of  Adelaide  and  select  town 
lots  and  farms  in  the  sand  and  the  mangrove  swamps 
by  the  sea.  The  crowds  continued  to  come,  prices 
of  land  rose  high,  then  higher  and  still  higher, 
everybody  was  prosperous  and  happy,  the  boom 
swelled  into  gigantic  proportions.  A  village  of 
sheet-iron  huts  and  clapboard  sheds  sprang  up  in 
the  sand,  and  in  these  wigwams  fashion  made  dis 
play;  richly-dressed  ladies  played  on  costly  pianos, 
London  swells  in  evening  dress  and  patent-leather 
boots  were  abundant,  and  this  fine  society  drank 
champagne,  and  in  other  ways  conducted  itself  in 
this  capital  of  humble  sheds  as  it  had  been  accus 
tomed  to  do  in  the  aristocratic  quarters  of  the 
metropolis  of  the  world.  The  provincial  govern 
ment  put  up  expensive  buildings  for  its  own  use, 
and  a  palace  with  gardens  for  the  use  of  its  governor. 


Following  the  Equator  183 

The  governor  had  a  guard,  and  maintained  a  court. 
Roads,  wharves,  and  hospitals  were  built.  All  this 
on  credit,  on  paper,  on  wind,  on  inflated  and  ficti 
tious  values  —  on  the  boom's  moonshine,  in  fact. 

This  went  en  handsomely  during  four  or  five 
years.  Then  all  of  a  sudden  came  a  smash.  Bills 
for  a  huge  amount  drawn  by  the  governor  upon 
the  Treasury  were  dishonored,  land  company's 
credit  went  up  in  smoke,  a  panic  followed,  values 
fell  with  a  rush,  the  frightened  immigrants  seized 
their  gripsacks  and  fled  to  other  lands,  leaving  be 
hind  them  a  good  imitation  of  a  solitude,  where 
lately  had  been  a  buzzing  and  populous  hive  of  men. 

Adelaide  was  indeed  almost  empty;  its  popula 
tion  had  fallen  to  3,000.  During  two  years  or  more 
the  death-trance  continued.  Prospect  of  revival 
there  was  none;  hope  of  it  ceased.  Then,  as  sud 
denly  as  the  paralysis  had  come,  came  the  resurrec 
tion  from  it.  Those  astonishingly  rich  copper  mines 
were  discovered,  and  the  corpse  got  up  and  danced. 

The  wool  production  began  to  grow;  grain -raising 
followed  —  followed  so  vigorously,  too,  that  four 
or  five  years  after  the  copper  discovery,  this  little 
colony,  which  had  had  to  import  its  breadstuffs 
formerly,  and  pay  hard  prices  for  them  —  once  $50 
a  barrel  for  flour- — had  become  an  exporter  of 
grain.  The  prosperities  continued.  After  many 
years,  Providence,  desiring  to  show  especial  regard 
for  New  South  Wales  and  exhibit  a  loving  interest 
in  its  welfare  which  should  certify  to  all  nations  the 


184  Following  the  Equator 

recognition  of  that  colony's  conspicuous  righteous 
ness  and  distinguished  well-deserving,  conferred 
upon  it  that  treasury  of  inconceivable  riches,  Broken 
Hill ;  and  South  Australia  went  over  the  border  and 
took  it,  giving  thanks. 

Among  our  passengers  was  an  American  with  a 
unique  vocation.  Unique  is  a  strong  word,  but  I 
use  it  justifiably  if  I  did  not  misconceive  what  the 
American  told  me;  for  I  understood  him  to  say 
that  in  the  world  there  was  not  another  man  engaged 
in  the  business  which  he  was  following.  He  was 
buying  the  kangaroo-skin  crop ;  buying  all  of  it, 
both  the  Australian  crop  and  the  Tasmanian ;  and 
buying  it  for  an  American  house  in  New  York.  The 
prices  were  not  high,  as  there  was  no  competition, 
but  the  year's  aggregate  of  skins  would  cost  him 
.£30,000.  I  had  had  the  idea  that  the  kangaroo 
was  about  extinct  in  Tasmania  and  well  thinned  out 
on  the  continent.  In  America  the  skins  are  tanned 
and  made  into  shoes.  After  the  tanning,  the  leather 
takes  a  new  name — -which  I  have  forgotten  —  I  only 
remember  that  the  new  name  does  not  indicate  that 
the  kangaroo  furnishes  the  leather.  There  was  a 
German  competition  for  a  while,  some  years  ago, 
but  that  has  ceased.  The  Germans  failed  to  arrive 
at  the  secret  of  tanning  the  skins  successfully,  and 
they  withdrew  from  the  business.  Now  then,  I 
suppose  that  I  have  seen  a  man  whose  occupation 
is  really  entitled  to  bear  that  high  epithet  —  unique. 
And  I  suppose  that  there  is  not  another  occupation 


Following  the  Equator  185 

in  the  world  that  is  restricted  to  the  hands  of  a  sole 
person.  I  can  think  of  no  instance  of  it.  There  is 
more  than  one  Pope,  there  is  more  than  one  Em 
peror,  there  is  even  more  than  one  living  god,  walk 
ing  upon  the  earth  and  worshiped  in  all  sincerity  by 
large  populations  of  men.  I  have  seen  and  talked 
with  two  of  these  Beings  myself  in  India,  and  I 
have  the  autograph  of  one  of  them.  It  can  come 
good,  by  and  by,  I  reckon,  if  I  attach  it  to  a 
41  permit". 

Approaching  Adelaide  we  dismounted  from  the 
train,  as  the  French  say,  and  were  driven  in  an  open 
carriage  over  the  hills  and  along  their  slopes  to  the 
city.  It  was  an  excursion  of  an  hour  or  two,  and 
the  charm  of  it  could  not  be  overstated,  I  think. 
The  road  wound  around  gaps  and  gorges,  and 
offered  all  varieties  of  scenery  and  prospect  — 
mountains,  crags,  country  homes,  gardens,  forests 
—  color,  color,  color  everywhere,  and  the  air  fine 
and  fresh,  the  skies  blue,  and  not  a  shred  of  cloud 
to  mar  the  downpour  of  the  brilliant  sunshine.  And 
finally  the  mountain  gateway  opened,  and  the  im 
mense  plain  lay  spread  out  below  and  stretching 
away  into  dim  distances  on  every  hand,  soft  and 
delicate  and  dainty  and  beautiful.  On  its  near  edge 
reposed  the  city. 

We  descended  and  entered.  There  was  nothing 
to  remind  one  of  the  humble  capital  of  huts  and 
sheds  of  the  long-vanished  day  of  the  land-boom. 
No,  this  was  a  modern  city,  with  wide  streets,  com- 


186 


Following  the  Equator 


pactly  built;  with  fine  homes  everywhere,  embow- 
ered  in  foliage  and  flowers,  and  with  imposing 
masses  of  public  buildings  nobly  grouped  and 
architecturally  beautiful. 

There  was  prosperity  in  the  air ;  for  another  boom 
•was  on.  Providence,  desiring  to  show  especial  re 
gard  for  the  neighboring  colony  on  the  west  —  called 
Western  Australia — and  exhibit  a  loving  interest  in 
its  welfare  which  should  certify  to  all  nations  the 
recognition  of  that  colony's  conspicuous  righteous 
ness  and  distinguished  well-deserving,  had  recently 
conferred  upon  it  that  majestic  treasury  of  golden 
riches,  Coolgardie;  and  now  South  Australia  had 
gone  around  the  corner  and  taken  it,  giving  thanks. 
Everything  comes  to  him  who  is  patient  and  good, 
and  waits. 

But  South  Australia  deserves  much,  for  apparently 
she  is  a  hospitable  home  for  every  alien  who  chooses 
to  come;  and  for  his  religion,  too.  She  has  a 
population,  as  per  the  latest  census,  of  only  320,000 
odd,  and  yet  her  varieties  of  religion  indicate  the 
presence  within  her  borders  of  samples  of  people 
from  pretty  nearly  every  part  of  the  globe  you  can 
think  of.  Tabulated,  these  varieties  of  religion 
make  a  remarkable  show.  One  would  have  to  go 
far  to  find  its  match.  I  copy  here  this  cosmopolitan 
curiosity,  and  it  comes  from  the  published  census : 


Church  of  England, 
Roman  Catholic,  . 
Wesleyan,  .  . 


89,271 
47,179 
49,159 


Lutheran,  . 
Presbyterian,  . 
Congregationalist, 


23,328 
18,206 
11,882 


Following  the  Equator 


187 


Bible  Christian,       .         .  15,762 

Primitive  Methodist,         .  11,654 

Baptist,.         .         .         .  17,547 

Christian  Brethren,           .  465 

Methodist  New  Connexion,  39 

Unitarian,       .         .         .  688 

Church  of  Christ,    ,         .  3,367 

Society  of  Friends,  .         .  100 

Salvation  Army,       .          .  4,356 

New  Jerusalem  Church,  .  168 


Jews,      ....  840 

Protestants  (undefined), .  5,532 

Mohammedans,       .         .  299 

Confucians,  etc.,     .         .  3,884 

Other  religions,        .         .  1,719 

Object,  ....  6,940 

Not  stated,     .         .         .  8,046 


Total, 


320,431 


The  item  in  the  above  list  "  Other  religions  "  in 
cludes  the  following  as  returned : 


Agnostics,       ... 

50 

Mennonists,    .         .         . 

1 

Atheists, 

22 

Moravians, 

139 

Believers  in  Christ, 

4 

Mormons,       ... 

4 

Buddhists, 

52 

Naturalists,     .         .         . 

2 

Calvinists,        ... 

46 

Orthodox,       .         .         . 

4 

Christadelphians,     .         . 

134 

Others  (indefinite),          . 

17 

Christians,       .          .          . 

308 

Pagans, 

20 

Christ's  Chapel, 

9 

Pantheists, 

3 

Christian  Israelites,           . 

2 

Plymouth  Brethren, 

III 

Christian  Socialists, 

6 

Rationalists,    ... 

4 

Church  of  God, 

6 

Reformers,      .         . 

7 

Cosmopolitans,        .         . 

3 

Secularists,      ... 

12 

Deists,   .... 

14 

Seventh  -day  Adventists,  . 

203 

Evangelists,    .         .         . 

60 

Shaker, 

I 

Exclusive  Brethren, 

8 

Shintoists,       ... 

24 

Free  Church, 

21 

Spiritualists,    .         .         . 

37 

Free  Methodists,     . 

5 

Theosophists, 

9 

Freethinkers, 

258 

Town  (City)  Mission, 

16 

Followers  of  Christ, 

8 

Welsh  Church, 

27 

Gospel  Meetings,     . 

ii 

Huguenot,      .          .         . 

2 

Greek  Church, 

44 

Hussite,           ... 

I 

Infidels, 

9 

Zoroastrians,  .          .         . 

2 

Maronites, 

2 

Zwinglian,       •         .         . 

I 

About  64  roads  to  the  other  world.     You  see  how 


188  Following  the  Equator 

healthy  the  religious  atmosphere  is.  Anything  can 
live  in  it.  Agnostics,  Atheists,  Freethinkers,  Infi 
dels,  Mormons,  Pagans,  Indefinites:  they  are  all 
there.  And  all  the  big  sects  of  the  world  can  do 
more  than  merely  live  in  it:  they  can  spread, 
flourish,  prosper.  All  except  the  Spiritualists  and 
the  Theosophists.  That  is  the  most  curious  feature 
of  this  curious  table.  What  is  the  matter  with  the 
specter?  Why  do  they  puff  him  away?  He  is  a 
welcome  toy  everywhere  else  in  the  world. 


CHAPTER  XIX. 

Pity  is  for  the  living,  envy  is  for  the  dead. 

—PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar* 

'"PHE  successor  of  the  sheet-iron  hamlet  of  the 
I  mangrove  marshes  has  that  other  Australian 
specialty,  the  Botanical  Gardens.  V/e  cannot  have 
these  paradises.  The  best  we  could  do  would  be  to 
cover  a  vast  acreage  under  glass  and  apply  steam 
heat,  But  it  would  be  inadequate,  the  lacks  would 
still  be  so  great:  the  confined  sense,  the  sense  of 
suffocation,  the  atmospheric  dimness,  the  sweaty 
heat  —  these  would  all  be  there,  in  place  of  the 
Australian  openness  to  the  sky,  ilie  sunshine,  and  the 
breeze.  Whatever  will  grow  under  glass  with  us 
will  flourish  rampantly  out  of  doors  in  Australia.* 
When  the  white  man  came  the  continent  was  nearly 
as  poor,  in  variety  of  vegetation,  as  the  desert  of 
Sahara;  now  it  has  everything  that  grows  on  the 
earth.  In  fact,  not  Australia  only,  but  all  Austra 
lasia  has  levied  tribute  upon  the  flora  of  the  rest  of 
the  world ;  and  wherever  one  goes  the  results  ap- 

*The  greatest  heat  in  Victoria,  that  there  is  an  authoritative  record 
of,  was  at  Sandhurst,  in  January,  1862.  The  thermometer  then  regis 
tered  117  degrees  in  the  shade.  In  January,  1880,  the  heat  at  Adelaide, 
South  Australia,  was  1 72  degrees  in  the  sun. 

13*  (189) 


190  Following  the  Equator 

pear,  in  gardens  private  and  public,  in  the  woodsy 
walls  of  the  highways,  and  in  even  the  forests.  If 
you  see  a  curious  or  beautiful  tree  or  bush  or  flower, 
and  ask  about  it,  the  people,  answering,  usually 
name  a  foreign  country  as  the  place  of  its  origin  — 
India,  Africa,  Japan,  China,  England,  America, 
Java,  Sumatra,  New  Guinea,  Polynesia,  and  so  on. 

In  the  Zoological  Gardens  of  Adelaide  I  saw  the 
only  laughing  jackass  that  ever  showed  any  disposi 
tion  to  be  courteous  to  me.  This  one  opened  his 
head  wide  and  laughed  like  a  demon;  or  like  a 
maniac  who  was  consumed  with  humorous  scorn 
over  a  cheap  and  degraded  pun.  It  was  a  very 
human  laugh.  If  he  had  been  out  of  sight  I  could 
have  believed  that  the  laughter  came  from  a  man. 
It  is  an  odd-looking  bird,  with  a  head  and  beak  that 
are  much  too  large  for  its  body.  In  time  man  will 
exterminate  the  rest  of  the  wild  creatures  of  Aus 
tralia,  but  this  one  will  probably  survive,  for  man  is 
his  friend  and  lets  him  alone.  Man  always  has  a 
good  reason  for  his  charities  toward  wild  things, 
human  or  animal  —  when  he  has  any.  In  this  case 
the  bird  is  spared  because  he  kills  snakes.  If  L.  J. 
will  take  my  advice  he  will  not  kill  all  of  them. 

In  that  garden  I  also  saw  the  wild  Australian  dog 
—  the  dingo.  He  was  a  beautiful  creature  — 
shapely,  graceful,  a  little  wolfish  in  some  of  his 
aspects,  but  with  a  most  friendly  eye  and  sociable 
disposition.  The  dingo  is  not  an  importation ;  he 
was  present  in  great  force  when  the  whites  first  came 


Following  the  Equator  191 

to  the  continent.  It  may  be  that  he  is  the  oldest 
dog  in  the  universe ;  his  origin,  his  descent,  the 
place  where  his  ancestors  first  appeared,  are  as  un 
known  and  as  untraceable  as  are  the  camel's.  He 
is  the  most  precious  dog  in  the  world,  for  he  does 
not  bark.  But  in  an  evil  hour  he  got  to  raiding  the 
sheep-runs  to  appease  his  hunger,  and  that  sealed 
hi?  doom.  He  is  hunted,  now,  just  as  if  he  were  a 
wolf.  He  has  been  sentenced  to  extermination,  and 
the  sentence  will  be  carried  out.  This  is  all  right, 
and  not  objectionable.  The  world  was  made  for 
man  —  the  white  man. 

South  Australia  is  ccnfusingly  named.  All  of 
the  colonies  have  a  southern  exposure  except  one  — 
Queensland.  Properly  speaking,  South  Australia  is 
middle  Australia.  It  extends  straight  up  through 
the  center  of  the  continent  like  the  middle  board  in 
a  center-table.  It  is  2,000  miles  high,  from  south 
to  north,  and  about  a  third  as  wide.  A  wee  little 
spot  down  in  its  southeastern  corner  contains  eight 
or  nine-tenths  of  its  population  ;  the  other  one  or  two- 
tenths  are  elsewhere  —  as  elsewhere  as  they  could 
be  in  the  United  States  with  all  the  country  between 
Denver  and  Chicago,  and  Canada  and  the  Gulf  of 
Mexico  to  scatter  over.  There  is  plenty  of  room. 

A  telegraph  line  stretches  straight  up  north 
through  that  2,000  miles  of  wilderness  and  desert 
from  Adelaide  to  Port  Darwm  on  the  edge  of  the 
upper  ocean.  South  Australia  built  the  line;  and 
did  it  in  1871-2  when  her  population  numbered  only 


192  Following  the  Equator 

185,000.  It  was  a  great  work;  for  there  were  no 
roads,  no  paths;  1,300  miles  of  the  route  had  been 
traversed  but  once  before  by  white  men;  provisions, 
wire,  and  poles  had  to  be  carried  over  immense 
stretches  of  desert;  wells  had  to  be  dug  along  the 
route  to  supply  the  men  and  cattle  with  water. 

A  cable  had  been  previously  laid  from  Port  Dar 
win  to  Java  and  thence  to  India,  and  there  was  tele 
graphic  communication  with  England  from  India. 
And  so,  if  Adelaide  could  make  connection  with 
Port  Darwin  it  meant  connection  with  the  whole 
world.  The  enterprise  succeeded.  One  could  watch 
the  London  markets  daily,  now;  the  profit  to  the 
wool-growers  of  Australia  was  instant  and  enormous. 

A  telegram  from  Melbourne  to  San  Francisco 
covers  approximately  20,000  miles  —  the  equivalent 
of  five-sixths  of  the  way  around  the  globe.  It  has 
to  halt  along  the  way  a  good  many  times  and  be 
repeated ;  still,  but  little  time  is  lost.  These  halts, 
and  the  distances  between  them,  are  here  tabulated.* 


Miles 
Melbourne  —  Mount  Gambier,  300 
Mount  Gambler  —  Adelaide,      270 
Adelaide  —  Port  Augusta,    .      200 
Pt.  Augusta  —  Alice  Springs,  1,036 
Alice  Springs  —  Port  Darwin,    898 
Pt.  Darwin  —  Banjoewangie,  1,150 
Banjoewangie  —  Batavia,     .      480 
Batavia  —  Singapore,      .     .       553 
Singapore  —  Penang,      .     .      399 
Penang  —  Madras,     .     .     .   1,280 

Madras  —  Bombay,    . 

Miles 
•     •       650 
.      .    1,662 

Suez  —  Alexandria,    . 
Alexandria  —  Malta,  . 
Malta  —  Gibraltar,     . 

.      .       224 
.      .       828 
.   T.ooR 

Gibraltar  —  Falmouth,    .     .   1,061 
Falmouth  —  London,      .     .      350 
London  —  New  York,     .     .  2,500 
New  York  —  San  Francisco,  3,500 

*From   "Round  the  Empire"   (George  R.   Parkin"),  all  but  the 
last  two. 

Following  the  Equator  193 

I  was  in  Adelaide  again,  some  months  later,  and 
saw  the  multitudes  gather  in  the  neighboring  city  of 
Glenelg  to  commemorate  the  Reading  of  the  Procla 
mation —  in  1836  —  which  founded  the  Province. 
If  I  have  at  any  time  called  it  a  Colony,  I  withdraw 
the  discourtesy.  It  is  not  a  Colony,  it  is  a  Province; 
and  officially  so.  Moreover,  it  is  the  only  one  so 
named  in  Australasia.  There  was  great  enthusiasm ; 
it  was  the  Province's  national  holiday,  its  Fourth  of 
July,  so  to  speak.  It  is  the  pre-eminent  holiday ; 
and  that  is  saying  much,  in  a  country  where  they 
seem  to  have  a  most  un-English  mania  for  holidays. 
Mainly  they  are  workingmen's  holidays;  for  in 
South  Australia  the  workingman  is  sovereign ;  his 
vote  is  the  desire  of  the  politician  —  indeed,  it  is  the 
very  breath  of  the  politician's  being;  the  parliament 
exists  to  deliver  the  will  of  the  workingman,  and  the 
Government  exists  to  execute  it.  The  workingman 
is  a  great  power  everywhere  in  Australia,  but  South 
Australia  is  his  paradise.  He  has  had  a  hard  time 
in  this  world,  and  has  earned  a  paradise.  I  am  glad 
he  has  found  it.  The  holidays  there  are  frequent 
enough  to  be  bewildering  to  the  stranger.  I  tried 
to  get  the  hang  of  the  system,  but  was  not  able  to 
do  it. 

You  have  seen  that  the  Province  is  tolerant, 
religious-wise.  It  is  so  politically,  also.  One  of 
the  speakers  at  the  Commemoration  banquet  —  the 
Minister  of  Public  Works  —  was  ?n  American,  born 
and  reared  in  New  England.  There  is  nothing 
13* 


194  Following  the  Equator 

narrow  about  the  Province,  politically,  or  in  any 
other  way  that  I  know  of.  Sixty-four  religions  and 
a  Yankee  cabinet  minister.  No  amount  of  horse- 
racing  can  damn  this  community. 

The  mean  temperature  of  the  Province  is  62°. 
The  death-rate  is  13  in  the  1,000  —  about  half  what 
it  is  in  the  city  of  New  York,  I  should  think,  and 
New  York  is  a  healthy  city.  Thirteen  is  the  death- 
rate  for  the  average  citizen  of  the  Province,  but 
there  seems  to  be  no  death-rate  for  the  old  people. 
There  were  people  at  the  Commemoration  banquet 
who  could  remember  Cromwell.  There  were  six  of 
them.  These  Old  Settlers  had  all  been  present  at 
the  original  Reading  of  the  Proclamation,  in  1836. 
They  showed  signs  of  the  blightings  and  blastings  of 
time,  in  their  outward  aspect,  but  they  were  young 
within;  young  and  cheerful,  and  ready  to  talk; 
ready  to  talk,  and  talk  all  you  wanted;  in  their 
turn,  and  out  of  it.  They  were  down  for  six 
speeches,  and  they  made  42.  The  governor  and 
the  cabinet  and  the  mayor  were  down  for  42 
speeches,  and  they  made  6.  They  have  splendid 
grit,  the  Old  Settlers,  splendid  staying  power.  But 
they  do  not  hear  well,  and  when  they  see  the  mayor 
going  through  motions  which  they  recognize  as  the 
introducing  of  a  speaker,  they  think  they  are  the 
one,  and  they  all  get  up  together,  and  begin  to  re 
spond,  in  the  most  animated  way;  and  the  more  the 
mayor  gesticulates,  and  shouts  "Sit  down!  Sit 
down!"  the  more  they  take  it  for  applause,  and  the 


THE    OLD    SETTLERS 


OF    THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


Following  the  Equator  195 

more  excited  and  reminiscent  and  enthusiastic  they 
get;  and  next,  when  they  see  the  whole  house 
laughing  and  crying,  three  of  them  think  it  is  about 
the  bitter  old-time  hardships  they  are  describing, 
and  the  other  three  think  the  laughter  is  caused  by 
the  jokes  they  have  been  uncorking  —  jokes  of  the 
vintage  of  1836  —  and  then  the  way  they  do  go  on  ! 
And  finally  when  ushers  come  and  plead,  and  beg, 
and  gently  and  reverently  crowd  them  down  into 
their  seats,  they  say,  "  Oh,  I'm  not  tired  —  I  could 
bang  along  a  week!"  and  they  sit  there  looking 
simple  and  childlike,  and  gentle,  and  proud  of  their 
oratory,  and  wholly  unconscious  of  what  is  going 
on  at  the  other  end  of  the  room.  And  so  one  of 
the  great  dignitaries  gets  a  chance,  and  begins  his 
carefully-prepared  speech,  impressively  and  with 
solemnity : 

"  When  we,  now  great  and  prosperous  and  powerful,  bow  our  heads 
in  reverent  wonder  in  the  contemplation  of  those  sublimities  of  energy, 
of  wisdom,  of  forethought,  of  —  " 

Up  come  the  immortal  six  again,  in  a  body,  with 
a  joyous  "  Hey,  I've  thought  of  another  one  !"  and 
at  it  they  go,  with  might  and  main,  hearing  not  a 
whisper  of  the  pandemonium  that  salutes  them,  but 
taking  all  the  visible  violences  for  applause,  as  be 
fore,  and  hammering  joyously  away  till  the  implor 
ing  ushers  pray  them  into  their  seats  again.  And  a 
pity,  too ;  for  those  lovely  old  boys  did  so  enjoy 
living  their  heroic  youth  over,  in  these  days  of  their 
honored  antiquity;  and  certainly  the  things  they 

M» 


196  Following  the  Equator 

had  to  tell  were  usually  worth  the  telling  and  the 
hearing. 

It  was  a  stirring  spectacle ;  stirring  in  more  ways 
than  one,  for  it  was  amazingly  funny,  and  at  the 
same  time  deeply  pathetic ;  for  they  had  seen  so 
much,  these  time-worn  veterans,  and  had  suffered  so 
much;  and  had  built  so  strongly  and  well,  and  laid 
the  foundations  of  their  commonwealth  so  deep,  in 
liberty  and  tolerance;  and  had  lived  to  see  the 
structure  rise  to  such  state  and  dignity  and  hear 
themselves  so  praised  for  their  honorable  work. 

One  of  these  old  gentlemen  told  me  some  things 
of  interest  afterward ;  things  about  the  aboriginals, 
mainly.  Rethought  them  intelligent — remarkably 
so  in  some  directions  —  and  he  said  that  along  with 
their  unpleasant  qualities  they  had  some  exceedingly 
good  ones ;  and  he  considered  it  a  great  pity  that 
the  race  had  died  out.  He  instanced  their  invention 
of  the  boomerang  and  the  "  weet-weet  "  as  evi 
dences  of  their  brightness ;  and  as  another  evidence 
of  it  he  said  he  had  never  seen  a  white  man  who 
had  cleverness  enough  to  learn  to  do  the  miracles 
with  those  two  toys  that  the  aboriginals  achieved. 
He  said  that  even  the  smartest  whites  had  been 
obliged  to  confess  that  they  could  not  learn  the  trick 
of  the  boomerang  in  perfection ;  that  it  had  possi 
bilities  which  they  could  not  master.  The  white 
man  could  not  control  its  motions,  could  not  make 
it  obey  him;  but  the  aboriginal  could.  He  told  me 
some  wonderful  things  —  some  almost  incredible 


Following  the  Equator  197 

things  —  which  he  had  seen  the  blacks  do  with  the 
boomerang  and  the  weet-weet.  They  have  been 
confirmed  to  me  since  by  other  early  settlers  and  by 
trustworthy  books. 

It  is  contended  —  and  may  be  said  to  be  conceded 
—  that  the  boomerang  was  known  to  certain  savage 
tribes  in  Europe  in  Roman  times.  In  support  of 
this,  Virgil  and  two  other  Roman  poets  are  quoted. 
It  is  also  contended  that  it  was  known  to  the  ancient 
Egyptians. 

One  of  two  things  is  then  apparent:  either  some 
one  with  a  boomerang  arrived  in  Australia  in  the 
days  of  antiquity  before  European  knowledge  of  the 
thing  had  been  lost,  or  the  Australian  aboriginal 
re-invented  it.  It  will  take  some  time  to  find  out 
which  of  these  two  propositions  is  the  fact.  But 
there  is  no  hurry. 


CHAPTER   XX. 


It  is  by  the  goodness  of  God  that  in  our  country  we  have  those  three  un 
speakably  precious  things  :  freedom  of  speech,  freedom  of  conscience,  and  the 
prudence  never  to  practice  either  of  them. 

—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 


diary: 

Mr.  G.  called.  I  had  not  seen  him  since 
Nauheim,  Germany  —  several  years  ago;  the  time 
that  the  cholera  broke  out  at  Hamburg.  We  talked 
of  the  people  we  had  known  there,  or  had  casually 
met;  and  G.  said: 

"  Do  you  remember  my  introducing  you  to  an 
earl  —  the  Earl  of  C.?" 

"  Yes.  That  was  the  last  time  I  saw  you.  You 
and  he  were  in  a  carriage,  just  starting  —  belated  — 
for  the  train.  I  remember  it." 

"  I  remember  it  too,  because  of  a  thing  which 
happened  then  which  I  was  not  looking  for.  He 
had  told  me  a  while  before  about  a  remarkable  and 
interesting  Californian  whom  he  had  met  and  who 
was  a  friend  of  yours,  and  said  that  if  he  should 
ever  meet  you  he  would  ask  you  for  some  particulars 
about  that  Californian.  The  subject  was  not  men 
tioned  that  day  at  Nauheim,  for  we  were  hurrying 

(198) 


Following  the  Equator  199 

away,  and  there  was  no  time;  but  the  thing  that 
surprised  me  was  this:  when  I  introduced  you,  you 
said,  'I  am  glad  to  meet  your  lordship  —  again.' 
The  *  again  '  was  the  surprise.  He  is  a  little  hard 
of  hearing,  and  didn't  catch  that  word,  and  I 
thought  you  hadn't  intended  that  he  should.  As 
we  drove  off  I  had  only  time  to  say,  *  Why,  what  do 
you  know  about  him?'  and  I  understood  you  to 
say,  *  Oh,  nothing,  except  that  he  is  the  quickest 
judge  of — '  Then  we  were  gone,  and  I  didn't  get 
the  rest.  I  wondered  what  it  was  that  he  was  such 
a  quick  judge  of.  I  have  thought  of  it  many  times 
since,  and  still  wondered  what  it  could  be.  He  and 
I  talked  it  over,  but  could  not  guess  it  out.  He 
thought  it  must  be  fox-hounds  or  horses,  for  he  is  a 
good  judge  of  those  —  no  one  is  a  better.  Butj'0& 
couldn't  know  that,  because  you  didn't  know  him  ; 
you  had  mistaken  him  for  some  one  else ;  it  must  be 
that,  he  said,  because  he  knew  you  had  never  met 
him  before.  And  of  course  you  hadn't  —  had 
you?" 

44  Yes,  I  had." 

44  Is  that  so?     Where?" 

44  At  a  fox-hunt,  in  England." 

14  How  curious  that  is.  Why,  he  hadn't  the  least 
recollection  of  it.  Had  you  any  conversation  with 
him?" 

-Some  — yes." 

14  Well,  it  left  not  the  least  impression  upon  him. 
What  did  you  talk  about?" 


200  Following  the  Equator 

"  About  the  fox.     I  think  that  was  all." 

"Why,  that  would  interest  him;  that  ought  to 
have  left  an  impression.  What  did  he  talk  about?" 

"  The  fox." 

"  It's  very  curious.  I  don't  understand  it.  Did 
what  he  said  leave  an  impression  upon  you?" 

"  Yes.  It  showed  me  that  he  was  a  quick  judge 
of — however,  I  will  tell  you  all  about  it,  then  you 
will  understand.  It  was  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago 
— 1873  or  '74.  I  had  an  American  friend  in  Lon 
don  named  F.,  who  was  fond  of  hunting,  and  his 
friends  the  Blanks  invited  him  and  me  to  come  out 
to  a  hunt  and  be  their  guests  at  their  country  place. 
In  the  morning  the  mounts  were  provided,  but  when 
I  saw  the  horses  I  changed  my  mind  and  asked 
permission  to  walk.  I  had  never  seen  an  English 
hunter  before,  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  I  could 
hunt  a  fox  safer  on  the  ground.  I  had  always  been 
diffident  about  horses,  anyway,  even  those  of  the 
common  altitudes,  and  I  did  not  feel  competent  to 
hunt  on  a  horse  that  went  on  stilts.  So  then  Mrs. 
Blank  came  to  my  help  and  said  I  could  go  with  her 
in  the  dog-cart  and  we  would  drive  to  a  place  she 
knew  of,  and  there  we  should  have  a  good  glimpse 
of  the  hunt  as  it  went  by. 

"When  we  got  to  that  place  I  got  out  and  went 
and  leaned  my  elbows  on  a  low  stone  wall  which 
enclosed  a  turfy  and  beautiful  great  field  with  heavy 
wood  on  all  its  sides  except  ours.  Mrs.  Blank  sat 
in  the  dog-cart  fifty  yards  away,  which  was  as  near 


Following  the  Equator  201 

as  she  could  get  with  the  vehicle.  I  was  full  of 
interest,  for  I  had  never  seen  a  fox-hunt.  I  waited, 
dreaming  and  imagining,  in  the  deep  stillness  and 
impressive  tranquillity  which  reigned  in  that  retired 
spot.  Presently,  from  away  off  in  the  forest  on  the 
left,  a  mellow  bugle-note  came  floating;  then  all  of 
a  sudden  a  multitude  of  dogs  burst  out  of  that  forest 
and  went  tearing  by  and  disappeared  in  the  forest 
on  the  right;  there  was  a  pause,  and  then  a  cloud  of 
horsemen  in  black  caps  and  crimson  coats  plunged 
out  of  the  left-hand  forest  and  went  flaming  across 
the  field  like  a  prairie-fire,  a  stirring  sight  to  see. 
There  was  one  man  ahead  of  the  rest,  and  he  came 
spurring  straight  at  me.  He  was  fiercely  excited. 
It  was  fine  to  see  him  ride ;  he  was  a  master  horse 
man.  He  came  like  a  storm  till  he  was  within  seven 
feet  of  me,  where  I  was  leaning  on  the  wall,  then  he 
stood  his  horse  straight  up  in  the  air  on  his  hind 
toe-nails,  and  shouted  like  a  demon: 

"  '  Which  way'd  the  fox  go?' 

"I  didn't  much  like  the  tone,  but  I  did  not  let 
on;  for  he  was  excited,  you  know.  But  I  was 
calm ;  so  I  said  softly,  and  without  acrimony : 

'"  Which  fox?' 

"It  seemed  to  anger  him.  I  don't  know  why; 
and  he  thundered  out : 

"  •  Which  fox?  Why,  the  fox !  Which  way  did 
they^r  go?' 

"  I  said,  with  great  gentleness  —  even  argumenta- 
tively : 


202  Following  the  Equator 

41  '  If  you  could  be  a  little  more  definite  —  a  little 
less  vague  —  because  I  am  a  stranger,  and  there  are 
many  foxes,  as  you  will  know  even  better  than  I, 
and  unless  I  know  which  one  it  is  that  you  desire  to 
identify,  and  — ' 

1  You're  certainly  the  damnedest  idiot  that  has 
escaped  in  a  thousand  years!'  and  he  snatched  his 
great  horse  around  as  easily  as  I  would  snatch  a  cat, 
and  was  away  like  a  hurricane.  A  very  excitable 
man. 

"  I  went  back  to  Mrs.  Blank,  and  she  was  excited, 
too  —  oh,  all  alive.  She  said: 

"  *  He  spoke  to  you  !  —  didn't  he?' 

"  '  Yes;  it  is  what  happened.' 

"  '  I  knew  it !  I  couldn't  hear  what  he  said,  but  I 
knew  he  spoke  to  you  !  Do  you  know  who  it  was  ? 
It  was  Lord  C., —  and  he  is  Master  of  the  Buck- 
hounds !  Tell  me  —  what  do  you  think  of  him?1 

"  '  Him?  Well,  for  sizing-up  a  stranger,  he's  got 
the  most  sudden  and  accurate  judgment  of  any  man 
I  ever  saw.' 

11  It  pleased  her.     I  thought  it  would." 

G.  got  away  from  Nauheim  just  in  time  to  escape 
being  shut  in  by  the  quarantine-bars  on  the  fron 
tiers;  and  so  did  we,  for  we  left  the  next  day.  But 
G.  had  a  great  deal  of  trouble  in  getting  by  the 
Italian  custom-house,  and  we  should  have  fared  like 
wise  but  for  the  thoughtfulness  of  our  consul-general 
in  Frankfort.  He  introduced  me  to  the  Italian 
consul-general,  and  I  brought  away  from  that  con- 


Following  the  Equator  203 

sulate  a  letter  which  made  our  way  smooth.  It  was 
a  dozen  lines  merely  commending  me  in  a  general 
way  to  the  courtesies  of  servants  in  his  Italian 
Majesty's  service,  but  it  was  more  powerful  than  it 
looked.  In  addition  to  a  raft  of  ordinary  baggage, 
we  had  six  or  eight  trunks  which  were  filled  exclu 
sively  with  dutiable  stuff  —  household  goods  pur 
chased  in  Frankfort  for  use  in  Florence,  v/here  we 
had  taken  a  house.  I  was  going  to  ship  these 
through  by  express;  but  at  the  last  moment  an 
order  went  throughout  Germany  forbidding  the 
moving  of  any  parcels  by  train  unless  the  owner 
went  with  them.  This  was  a  bad  outlook.  We 
must  take  these  things  along,  and  the  delay  sure  to 
be  caused  by  the  examination  of  them  in  the  custom 
house  might  lose  us  our  train.  I  imagined  all  sorts 
of  terrors,  and  enlarged  them  steadily  as  we  ap 
proached  the  Italian  frontier.  We  were  six  in 
number,  clogged  with  all  that  baggage,  and  I  was 
courier  for  the  party  —  the  most  incapable  one  they 
ever  employed. 

We  arrived,  and  pressed  with  the  crowd  into  the 
immense  custom-house,  and  the  usual  worries  began ; 
everybody  crowding  to  the  center  and  begging  to 
have  his  baggage  examined  first,  and  all  hands  clat 
tering  and  chattering  at  once.  It  seemed  to  me  that 
I  could  do  nothing;  it  would  be  better  to  give  it  all 
up  and  go  away  and  leave  the  baggage.  I  couldn't 
speak  the  language ;  I  should  never  accomplish  any 
thing.  Just  then  a  tall,  handsome  man  in  a  fine 


204  Following  the  Equator 

uniform  was  passing  by,  and  I  knew  he  must  be  the 
station-master  —  and  that  reminded  me  of  my  letter. 
I  ran  to  him  and  put  it  into  his  hands.  He  took  it 
out  of  the  envelope,  and  the  moment  his  eye  caught 
the  royal  coat  of  arms  printed  at  its  top,  he  took  off 
his  cap  and  made  a  beautiful  bow  to  me,  and  said 
in  English: 

"Which  is  your  baggage?  Please  show  it  to 
me." 

I  showed  him  the  mountain.  Nobody  was  dis 
turbing  it;  nobody  was  interested  in  it;  all  the 
family's  attempts  to  get  attention  to  it  had  failed  — 
except  in  the  case  of  one  of  the  trunks  containing 
the  dutiable  goods.  It  was  just  being  opened.  My 
officer  said : 

"There,  let  that  alone!  Lock  it.  Now  chalk 
it.  Chalk  all  of  the  lot.  Now  please  come  and 
show  me  the  hand-baggage." 

He  plowed  through  the  waiting  crowd,  I  follow 
ing,  to  the  counter,  and  he  gave  orders  again,  in  his 
emphatic  military  way : 

"  Chalk  these.     Chalk  all  of  them." 

Then  he  took  off  his  cap  and  made  that  beautiful 
bow  again,  and  went  his  way.  By  this  time  these 
attentions  had  attracted  the  wonder  of  that  acre  of 
passengers,  and  the  whisper  had  gone  around  that 
the  royal  family  were  present  getting  their  baggage 
chalked ;  and  as  we  passed  down  in  review  on  our 
way  to  the  door,  I  was  conscious  of  a  pervading 
atmosphere  of  envy  which  gave  me  deep  satisfaction. 


Following  the  Equator  205 

But  soon  there  was  an  accident.  My  overcoat 
pockets  were  stuffed  with  German  cigars  and  linen 
packages  of  American  smoking  tobacco,  and  a 
porter  was  following  us  around  with  this  overcoat 
on  his  arm,  and  gradually  getting  it  upside  down. 
Just  as  I,  in  the  rear  of  my  family,  moved  by  the 
sentinels  at  the  door,  about  three  hatfuls  of  the 
tobacco  tumbled  out  on  the  floor.  One  of  the 
soldiers  pounced  upon  it,  gathered  it  up  in  his  arms, 
pointed  back  whence  I  had  come,  and  marched  me 
ahead  of  him  past  that  long  wall  of  passengers 
again  —  he  chattering  and  exulting  like  a  devil,  they 
smiling  in  peaceful  joy,  and  I  trying  to  look  as  if 
my  pride  was  not  hurt,  and  as  if  I  did  not  mind 
being  brought  to  shame  before  these  pleased  people 
who  had  so  lately  envied  me.  But  at  heart  I  was 
cruelly  humbled. 

When  I  had  been  marched  two-thirds  of  the  long 
distance  and  the  misery  of  it  was  at  the  worst,  the 
stately  station-master  stepped  out  from  somewhere, 
and  the  soldier  left  me  and  darted  after  him  and 
overtook  him;  and  I  could  see  by  the  soldier's 
excited  gestures  that  he  was  betraying  to  him 
the  whole  shabby  business.  The  station-master  was 
plainly  very  angry.  He  came  striding  down  toward 
me,  and  when  he  was  come  near  he  began  to  pour 
out  a  stream  of  indignant  Italian ;  then  suddenly 
took  off  his  hat  and  made  that  beautiful  bow  and 
said : 

**  Oh,  it  is  you  !    I  beg  a  thousand  pardons  !    This 
14* 


206  Following  the  Equator 

idiot  here — "  He  turned  to  the  exulting  soldier 
and  burst  out  with  a  flood  of  white-hot  Italian  lava, 
and  the  next  moment  he  was  bowing,  and  the 
soldier  and  I  were  moving  in  procession  again  —  he 
in  the  lead  and  ashamed,  this  time,  I  with  my  chin 
up.  And  so  we  marched  by  the  crowd  of  fascinated 
passengers,  and  I  went  forth  to  the  train  with  the 
honors  of  war.  Tobacco  and  all. 


CHAPTER   XXI. 

Man  will  do  many  things  to  get  himself  loved,  he  will  do  all  things  to  ge! 
himself  envied.  —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

BEFORE  I  saw  Australia  I  had  never  heard  of  the 
"  weet-weet  "  at  all.  I  met  but  few  men  who 
had  seen  it  thrown  —  at  least  I  met  but  few  who 
mentioned  having  seen  it  thrown.  Roughly  de 
scribed,  it  is  a  fat  wooden  cigar  with  its  butt-end 
fastened  to  a  flexible  twig.  The  whole  thing  is  only 
a  couple  of  feet  long,  and  weighs  less  than  two 
ounces.  This  feather  —  so  to  call  it —  is  not  thrown 
through  the  air,  but  is  flung  with  an  underhanded 
throw  and  made  to  strike  the  ground  a  little  way  in 
front  of  the  thrower ;  then  it  glances  and  makes  a 
long  skip;  glances  again,  skips  again,  and  again  and 
again,  like  the  flat  stone  which  a  boy  sends  skating 
over  the  water.  The  water  is  smooth,  and  the  stone 
has  a  good  chance ;  so  a  strong  man  may  make  it 
travel  fifty  or  seventy-five  yards ;  but  the  weet-weet 
has  no  such  good  chance,  for  it  strikes  sand,  grass, 
and  earth  in  its  course.  Yet  an  expert  aboriginal 
has  sent  it  a  measured  distance  of  two  hundred  and 
twenty  yards.  It  would  have  gone  even  further,  but 
it  encountered  rank  ferns  and  underwood  on  its 

(207) 


208  Following  the  Equator 

passage  and  they  damaged  its  speed.  Two  hundred 
and  twenty  yards ;  and  so  weightless  a  toy  —  a 
mouse  on  the  end  of  a  bit  of  wire,  in  effect;  and  not 
sailing  through  the  accommodating  air,  but  en 
countering  grass  and  sand  and  stuff  at  every  jump. 
It  looks  wholly  impossible ;  but  Mr.  Brough  Smyth 
saw  the  feat  and  did  the  measuring,  and  set  down  the 
facts  in  his  book  about  aboriginal  life,  which  he 
wrote  by  command  of  the  Victorian  Government. 

What  is  the  secret  of  the  feat?  No  one  explains. 
It  cannot  be  physical  strength,  for  that  could  not 
drive  such  a  feather-weight  any  distance.  It  must 
be  art.  But  no  one  explains  what  the  art  of  it  is ; 
nor  how  it  gets  around  that  law  of  nature  which  says 
you  shall  not  throw  any  two-ounce  thing  220  yards, 
either  through  the  air  or  bumping  along  the  ground. 
Rev.  J.  G.  Wood  says1: 

"The  distance  to  which  the  weet-weet  or  kangaroo-rat  can  be 
thrown  is  truly  astonishing.  I  have  seen  an  Australian  stand  at  one  side 
of  Kennington  Oval  and  throw  the  kangaroo-rat  completely  across  it." 
(Width  of  Kennington  Oval  not  stated.)  "It  darts  through  the  air 
with  the  sharp  and  menacing  hiss  of  a  rifle-ball,  its  greatest  height  from 

the   ground   being  some  seven  or  eight   feet When 

properly  thrown  it  looks  just  like  a  living  animal  leaping  along. 

Its  movements  have  a  wonderful  resemblance  to  the  long  leaps  of 
a  kangaroo-rat  fleeing  in  alarm,  with  its  long  tail  trailing  behind  it." 

The  Old  Settler  said  that  he  had  seen  distances 
made  by  the  weet-weet,  in  the  early  days,  which 
almost  convinced  him  that  it  was  as  extraordinary 
an  instrument  as  the  boomerang. 

There  must  have  been  a  large  distribution  of  acute- 


Following  the  Equator  209 

ness  among  those  naked,  skinny  aboriginals,  or  they 
couldn't  have  been  such  unapproachable  trackers 
and  boomerangers  and  weet-weeters.  It  must  have 
been  race-aversion  that  put  upon  them  a  good  deal 
of  the  low-rate  intellectual  reputation  which  they 
bear  and  have  borne  this  long  time  in  the  world's 
estimate  of  them. 

They  were  lazy  —  always  lazy.  Perhaps  that  was 
their  trouble.  It  is  a  killing  defect.  Surely  they 
could  have  invented  and  built  a  competent  house, 
but  they  didn't.  And  they  could  have  invented  and 
developed  the  agricultural  arts,  but  they  didn't. 
They  went  naked  and  houseless,  and  lived  on  fish 
and  grubs  and  worms  and  wild  fruits,  and  were  just 
plain  savages,  for  all  their  smartness. 

With  a  country  as  big  as  the  United  States  to  live 
and  multiply  in,  and  with  no  epidemic  diseases 
among  them  till  the  white  man  came  with  those  and 
his  other  appliances  of  civilization,  it  is  quite  proba 
ble  that  there  was  never  a  day  in  his  history  when 
he  could  muster  100,000  of  his  race  in  all  Australia. 
He  diligently  and  deliberately  kept  population  down 
by  infanticide  —  largely ;  but  mainly  by  certain 
other  methods.  He  did  not  need  to  practice  these 
artificialities  any  more  after  the  white  man  came. 
The  v/hite  man  knew  ways  of  keeping  down  popula 
tion  which  were  worth  several  cf  his.  The  white 
man  knew  ways  of  reducing  a  native  population  80 
per  cent,  in  20  years.  The  native  had  never  seen 
anything  as  fine  as  that  before, 
14* 


x 

210  Following  the  Equator 

For  example,  there  is  the  case  of  the  country  now 
called  Victoria  —  a  country  eighty  times  as  large 
as  Rhode  Island,  as  I  have  already  said.  By  the 
best  official  guess  there  were  4,500  aboriginals  in  it 
when  the  whites  came  along  in  the  middle  of  the 
'Thirties.  Of  these  1 ,000  lived  in  Gippsland,  a 
patch  of  territory  the  size  of  fifteen  or  sixteen 
Rhode  Islands :  they  did  not  diminish  as  fast  as 
some  of  the  other  communities;  indeed,  at  the  end 
of  forty  years  there  were  still  200  of  them  left. 
The  Geelong  tribe  diminished  more  satisfactorily : 
from  173  persons  it  faded  to  34  in  twenty  years;  at 
the  end  of  another  twenty  the  tribe  numbered  one 
person  altogether.  The  two  Melbourne  tribes  could 
muster  almost  300  when  the  white  man  came ;  they 
could  muster  but  twenty  thirty-seven  years  later,  in 
1875.  In  that  year  there  were  still  odds  and  ends 
of  tribes  scattered  about  the  colony  of  Victoria,  but 
I  was  told  that  natives  of  full  blood  are  very  scarce 
now.  It  is  said  that  the  aboriginals  continue  in 
some  force  in  the  huge  territory  called  Queensland. 

The  early  whites  were  not  used  to  savages.  They 
could  not  understand  the  primary  law  of  savage  life : 
that  if  a  man  do  you  a  wrong,  his  whole  tribe  is  re 
sponsible —  each  individual  of  it  —  and  you  may 
take  your  change  out  of  any  individual  of  it,  without 
bothering  to  seek  out  the  guilty  one.  When  a  white 
killed  an  aboriginal,  the  tribe  applied  the  ancient  law, 
and  killed  the  first  white  they  came  across.  To 
the  whites  this  was  a  monstrous  thing.  Extermina- 


Following  the  Equator  211 

tlon  seemed  to  be  the  proper  medicine  for  such  crea 
tures  as  this.  They  did  not  kill  all  the  blacks,  but 
they  promptly  killed  enough  of  them  to  make  their 
own  persons  safe.  From  the  dawn  of  civilization 
down  to  this  day  the  white  man  has  always  used  that 
very  precaution.  Mrs.  Campbell  Praed  lived  in 
Queensland,  as  a  child,  in  the  early  days,  and  in  her 
"Sketches  of  Australian  Life"  we  get  informing 
pictures  of  the  early  struggles  of  the  white  and  the 
black  to  reform  each  other. 

Speaking  of  pioneer  days  in  the  mighty  wilderness 
of  Queensland,  Mrs.  Praed  says: 

"At  first  the  natives  retreated  before  the  whites;  and,  except  that 
they  every  now  and  then  speared  a  beast  in  one  of  the  herds,  gave  little 
cause  for  uneasiness.  But,  as  the  number  of  squatters  increased,  each 
one  taking  up  miles  of  country  and  bringing  two  or  three  men  in  hi« 
train,  so  that  shepherds'  huts  and  stockmen's  camps  lay  far  apart,  and 
defenseless  in  the  midst  of  hostile  tribes,  the  Blacks'  depredations 
became  more  frequent  and  murder  was  no  unusual  event. 

"The  loneliness  of  the  Australian  bush  can  hardly  be  painted  in 
words.  Here  extends  mile  after  mile  of  primeval  forest  where  perhaps 
foot  of  white  man  has  never  trod  —  interminable  vistas  where  the  euca 
lyptus  trees  rear  their  lofty  trunks  and  spread  forth  their  lanky  limbs, 
from  which  the  red  gum  oozes  and  hangs  in  fantastic  pendants  like 
crimson  stalactites;  ravines  along  the  sides  of  which  the  long-bladed 
grass  grows  rankly;  level  untimbered  plains  alternating  with  undulating 
tracts  of  pasture,  here  and  there  broken  by  a  stony  ridge,  steep  gully,  or 
dried-up  creek.  All  wild,  vast,  and  desolate;  all  the  same  monotonous 
gray  coloring,  except  where  the  wattle,  when  in  blossom,  shows  patches 
of  feathery  gold,  or  a  belt  of  scrub  lies  green,  glossy,  and  impenetrable 
as  Indian  jungle. 

"The  solitude  seems  intensified  by  the  strange  sounds  of  reptiles, 
birds,  and  insects,  and  by  the  absence  of  larger  creatures;  of  which  in 
the  daytime  the  only  audible  signs  are  the  stampede  of  a  herd  of  kanga 
roo,  or  the  rustle  of  a  wallabi,  or  a  dingo  stirring  the  grass  as  it  creeps 


212  Following  the  Equator 


to  its  lair.  But  there  are  the  whirring  of  locusts,  the  demoniac  chuckle 
of  the  laughing  jackass,  the  screeching  of  cockatoos  and  parrots,  the 
hissing  of  the  frilled  lizard,  and  the  buzzing  of  innumerable  insects  hid 
den  under  the  dense  undergrowth.  And  then  at  night,  the  melancholy 
wailing  of  the  curlews,  the  dismal  howling  of  dingoes,  the  discordant 
croaking  of  tree-frogs,  might  well  shake  the  nerves  of  the  solitary 
watcher." 

That  is  the  theater  for  the  drama.  When  you 
comprehend  one  or  two  other  details,  you  will  per 
ceive  how  well  suited  for  trouble  it  was,  and  how 
loudly  it  invited  it.  The  cattlemen's  stations  were 
scattered  over  that  profound  wilderness  miles  and 
miles  apart— at  each  station  half  a  dozen  persons. 
There  was  a  plenty  of  cattle,  the  black  natives  were 
always  ill-nourished  and  hungry.  The  land  be 
longed  to  them.  The  whites  had  not  bought  it,  and 
couldn't  buy  it;  for  the  tribes  had  no  chiefs,  nobody 
in  authority,  nobody  competent  to  sell  and  convey; 
and  the  tribes  themselves  had  no  comprehension  of 
the  idea  of  transferable  ownership  of  land.  The 
ousted  owners  were  despised  by  the  white  interlopers, 
and  this  opinion  was  not  hidden  under  a  bushel. 
More  promising  materials  for  a  tragedy  could  not 
have  been  collated.  Let  Mrs.  Praed  speak: 

"At  Nie  Nie  station,  one  dark  night,  the  unsuspecting  hut-keeper, 
having,  as  he  believed,  secured  himself  against  assault,  was  lying 
wrapped  in  his  blankets  sleeping  profoundly.  The  Blacks  crept  stealthily 
down  the  chimney  and  battered  in  his  skull  while  he  slept." 

One  could  guess  the  whole  drama  from  that  little 
text.  The  curtain  was  up.  It  would  not  fall  until 
the  mastership  of  one  party  or  the  other  was  de 
termined —  and  permanently: 


Following  the  Equator  21} 

"  There  was  treachery  on  both  sides.  The  Blacks  killed  the  Whites 
when  they  found  them  defenseless,  and  the  Whites  slew  the  Blacks  in  a 
wholesale  and  promiscuous  fashion  which  offended  against  my  childish 
sense  of  justice.  .  .  .  They  were  regarded  as  little  above  the  level 
of  brutes,  and  in  some  cases  were  destroyed  like  vermin. 

"  Here  is  an  instance.  A  squatter,  whose  station  was  surrounded 
by  Blacks,  whom  he  suspected  to  be  hostile  and  from  whom  he  feared 
an  attack,  parleyed  with  them  from  his  house-door.  He  told  them  it 
was  Christmas-time  —  a  time  at  which  all  men,  black  or  white,  feasted; 
that  there  were  flour,  sugar-plums,  good  things  in  plenty  in  the  store, 
and  that  he  would  make  for  them  such  a  pudding  as  they  had  never 
dreamed  of  —  a  great  pudding  of  which  all  might  eat  and  be  filled. 
The  Blacks  listened  and  were  lost.  The  pudding  was  made  and  dis 
tributed.  Next  morning  there  was  howling  in  the  camp,  for  it  had  been 
sweetened  with  sugar  and  arsenic !  " 

The  white  man's  spirit  was  right,  but  his  method 
was  wrong.  His  spirit  was  the  spirit  which  the 
civilized  white  has  always  exhibited  toward  the 
savage,  but  the  use  of  poison  was  a  departure  from 
custom.  True,  it  was  merely  a  technical  departure, 
not  a  real  one;  still,  it  was  a  departure,  and  there 
fore  a  mistake,  in  my  opinion.  It  was  better, 
kinder,  swifter,  and  much  more  humane  than  a 
number  of  the  methods  which  have  been  sanctified 
by  custom,  but  that  does  not  justify  its  employment. 
That  is,  it  does  not  wholly  justify  it.  Its  unusual 
nature  makes  it  stand  out  and  attract  an  amount  of 
attention  which  it  is  not  entitled  to.  It  takes  hold 
upon  morbid  imaginations  and  they  work  it  up  into 
a  sort  of  exhibition  of  cruelty,  and  this  smirches  the 
good  name  of  our  civilization,  whereas  one  of  the 
old  harsher  methods  would  have  had  no  such  effect 
because  usage  has  made  those  methods  familiar  to 


,p>  ^  w  ^ 

v    ^t^         QJ~    y/ 

214  Following  the  Equator 

us  and  innocent.  In  many  countries  we  have 
chained  the  savage  and  starved  him  to  death ;  and 
this  we  do  not  care  for,  because  custom  has  inured 
us  to  it;  yet  a  quick  death  by  poison  is  lovingkind 
ness  to  it.  In  many  countries  we  have  burned  the 
savage  at  the  stake ;  and  this  we  do  not  care  for, 
because  custom  has  inured  us  to  it;  yet  a  quick 
death  is  lovingkindness  to  it.  In  more  than  one 
country  we  have  hunted  the  savage  and  his  little 
children  and  their  mother  with  dogs  and  guns 
through  the  woods  and  swamps  for  an  afternoon's 
sport,  and  filled  the  region  with  happy  laughter 
over  their  sprawling  and  stumbling  flight,  and  their 
wild  supplications  for  mercy ;  but  this  method  we  do 
not  mind,  because  custom  has  inured  us  to  it;  yet 
a  quick  death  by  poison  is  lovingkindness  to  it.  In 
many  countries  we  have  taken  the  savage's  land 
from  him,  and  made  him  our  slave,  and  lashed  him 
every  day,  and  broken  his  pride,  and  made  death 
his  only  friend,  and  overworked  him  till  he  dropped 
in  his  tracks ;  and  this  we  do  not  care  for,  because 
custom  has  inured  us  to  it;  yet  a  quick  death  by 
poison  is  lovingkindness  to  it.  In  the  Matabeleland 
to-day  —  why,  there  we  are  confining  ourselves  to 
sanctified  custom,  we  Rhodes-Beit  millionaires  in 
South  Africa  and  Dukes  in  London;  and  nobody 
cares,  because  we  are  used  to  the  old  holy  customs, 
and  all  we  ask  is  that  no  notice-inviting  new  ones 
shall  be  intruded  upon  the  attention  of  our  comfort 
able  consciences.  Mrs.  Praed  says  of  the  poisoner, 


Following  the  Equator  215 

"  That  squatter  deserves  to  have  his  name  handed 
down  to  the  contempt  of  posterity." 

I  am  sorry  to  hear  her  say  that.  I  myself  blame 
him  for  one  thing,  and  severely,  but  I  stop  there.  I 
blame  him  for  the  indiscretion  of  introducing  a 
novelty  which  was  calculated  to  attract  attention  to 
our  civilization.  There  was  no  occasion  to  do  that. 
It  was  his  duty,  and  it  is  every  loyal  man's  duty,  to 
protect  that  heritage  in  every  way  he  can ;  and  the 
best  way  to  do  that  is  to  attract  attention  elsewhere. 
The  squatter's  judgment  was  bad  —  that  is  plain; 
but  his  heart  was  right.  He  is  almost  the  only 
pioneering  representative  of  civilization  in  history  who 
has  risen  above  the  prejudices  of  his  caste  and  his 
heredity  and  tried  to  introduce  the  element  of  mercy 
into  the  superior  race's  dealings  with  the  savage. 
His  name  is  lost,  and  it  is  a  pity ;  for  it  deserves  to 
be  handed  down  to  posterity  with  homage  and 
reverence. 

This  paragraph  is  from  a  London  journal : 

"To  learn  what  France  is  doing  to  spread  the  blessings  of  civiliza 
tion  in  her  distant  dependencies  we  may  turn  with  advantage  to  New 
Caledonia.  With  a  view  to  attracting  free  settlers  to  that  penal  colony, 
M.  Feillet,  the  Governor,  forcibly  expropriated  the  Kanaka  cultivators 
from  the  best  of  their  plantations,  with  a  derisory  compensation,  in  spite 
of  the  protests  of  the  Council  General  of  the  island.  Such  immigrants 
as  could  be  induced  to  cross  the  seas  thus  found  themselves  in  possession 
of  thousands  of  coffee,  cocoa,  banana,  and  bread-fruit  trees,  the  raising 
of  which  had  cost  the  wretched  natives  years  of  toil,  whilst  the  latter  had 
a  few  five- franc  pieces  to  spend  in  the  liquor  stores  of  Noumea." 

You  observe  the  combination?  It  is  robbery, 
humiliation,  and  slow,  slow  murder,  through  poverty 


216  Following  the  Equator 

and  the  white  man's  whisky.  The  savage's  gentle 
friend,  the  savage's  noble  friend,  the  only  magnani 
mous  and  unselfish  friend  the  savage  has  ever  had, 
was  not  there  with  the  merciful  swift  release  of  his 
poisoned  pudding. 

There  are  many  humorous  things  in  the  world ; 
among  them  the  white  man's  notion  that  he  is  less 
savage  than  the  other  savages.* 


*  See  Chapter  on  Tasmania,  post. 


^   ,t/^f^A 


CHAPTER   XXII. 

Nothing  is  so  ignorant  as  a  man's  left  hand,  except  a  lady's  watch. 

—Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar, 

YOU  notice  that  Mrs.  Praed  knows  her  art.  She 
can  place  a  thing  before  you  so  that  you  can 
see  it.  She  is  not  alone  in  that.  Australia  is  fertile 
in  writers  whose  books  are  faithful  mirrors  of  the  life 
of  the  country  and  of  its  history.  The  materials 
were  surprisingly  rich,  both  in  quality  and  in 
mass,  and  Marcus  Clarke,  Rolf  Boldrewood,  Gordon, 
Kendall,  and  the  others,  have  built  out  of  them  a 
brilliant  and  vigorous  literature,  and  one  which 
must  endure.  Materials  —  there  is  no  end  to  them! 
Why,  a  literature  might  be  made  out  of  the  aboriginal 
all  by  himself,  his  character  and  ways  are  so  freckled 
with  varieties  —  varieties  not  staled  by  familiarity, 
but  new  to  us.  You  do  not  need  to  invent  any 
picturesquenesses ;  whatever  you  want  in  that  line 
he  can  furnish  you  ;  and  they  will  not  be  fancies  and 
doubtful,  but  realities  and  authentic.  In  his  his 
tory,  as  preserved  by  the  white  man's  official  records, 
he  is  everything  —  everything  that  a  human  creature 
can  be.  He  covers  the  entire  ground.  He  is  a 

(217) 


218  Following  the  Equator 

coward  —  there  are  a  thousand  facts  to  prove  it. 
He  is  brave  —  there  are  a  thousand  facts  to  prove  it. 
He  is  treacherous  —  oh,  beyond  imagination!  he 
is  faithful,  loyal,  true  —  the  white  man's  records  sup 
ply  you  with  a  harvest  of  instances  of  it  that  arc 
noble,  worshipful,  and  pathetically  beautiful.  He 
kills  the  starving  stranger  who  comes  begging  for 
food  and  shelter  —  there  is  proof  of  it.  He  suc 
cors,  and  feeds,  and  guides  to  safety,  to-day,  the 
lost  stranger  who  fired  on  him  only  yesterday  — 
there  is  proof  of  it.  He  takes  his  reluctant  bride  by 
force,  he  courts  her  with  a  club,  then  loves  her 
faithfully  through  a  long  life  —  it  is  of  record.  He 
gathers  to  himself  another  wife  by  the  same  pro 
cesses,  beats  and  bangs  her  as  a  daily  diversion,  and 
by  and  by  lays  down  his  life  in  defending  her  from 
some  outside  harm  —  it  is  of  record.  He  will  face 
a  hundred  hostiles  to  rescue  one  of  his  children,  and 
will  kill  another  of  his  children  because  the  family 
is  large  enough  without  it.  His  delicate  stomach 
turns,  at  certain  details  of  the  white  man's  food; 
but  he  likes  over-ripe  fish,  and  braised  dog,  and  cat, 
and  rat,  and  will  eat  his  own  uncle  with  relish.  He 
is  a  sociable  animal,  yet  he  turns  aside  and  hides 
behind  his  shield  when  his  mother-in-law  goes  by. 
He  is  childishly  afraid  of  ghosts  and  other  trivialities 
that  menace  his  soul,  but  dread  of  physical  pain  is  a 
weakness  which  he  is  not  acquainted  with.  He 
knows  all  the  great  and  many  of  the  little  constella 
tions,  and  has  names  for  them ;  he  has  a  symbol- 


Following  the  Equator  219 

writing  by  means  of  which  he  can  convey  messages 
far  and  wide  among  the  tribes  ;  he  has  a  correct  eye 
for  form  and  expression,  and  draws  a  good  picture; 
he  can  track  a  fugitive  by  delicate  traces  which  the 
white  man's  eye  cannot  discern,  and  by  methods 
which  the  finest  white  intelligence  cannot  master; 
he  makes  a  missile  which  science  itself  cannot  dupli 
cate  without  the  model  —  if  with  it  ;  a  missile  whose 
secret  baffled  and  defeated  the  searchings  and  theoriz- 
ings  of  the  white  mathematicians  for  seventy  years  ; 
and  by  an  art  all  his  own  he  performs  miracles  with 
it  which  the  white  man  cannot  approach  untaught, 
nor  parallel  after  teaching.  Within  certain  limits 
this  savage's  intellect  is  the  alertest  and  the  brightest 
known  to  history  or  tradition  ;  and  yet  the  poor 
creature  was  never  able  to  invent  a  counting  system 
that  would  reach  above  five,  nor  a  vessel  that  he 
could  boil  water  in.  He  is  the  prize-curiosity  of  all 
the  races.  To  all  intents  and  purposes  he  is  dead 
•  —  in  the  body  ;  but  he  has  features  that  will  live  in 
literature. 

Mr.  Philip  Chauncy.  an  officer  of  the  Victorian 
Government,  contributed  to  its  archives  a  report  of 
his  personal  observations  of  the  aboriginals  which 
has  in  it  some  things  which  I  wish  to  condense 
slightly  and  insert  here.  He  speaks  of  the  quick 
ness  of  their  eyes  and  the  accuracy  of  their  judgment 
of  the  direction  of  approaching  missiles  as  being 
quite  extraordinary,  and  of  the  answering  supple 
ness  and  accuracy  of  limb  and  muscle  in  avoiding 


•V 


,  , 

220  Following  the  Equator 

the  missile  as  being  extraordinary  also.  He  has 
seen  an  aboriginal  stand  as  a  target  for  cricket-balls 
thrown  with  great  force  ten  or  fifteen  yards,  by  pro 
fessional  bowlers,  and  successfully  dodge  them  or 
parry  them  with  his  shield  during  about  half  an  hour. 
One  of  those  balls,  properly  placed,  could  have  killed 
him;  "Yet  he  depended,  with  the  utmost  self-pos 
session,  on  the  quickness  of  his  eye  and  his  agility." 

The  shield  was  the  customary  war-shield  of  his 
race,  and  would  not  be  a  protection  to  you  or  to  me. 
It  is  no  broader  than  a  stovepipe,  and  is  about  as 
long  as  a  man's  arm.  The  opposing  surface  is  not 
flat,  but  slopes  away  from  the  center-line  like  a 
boat's  bow.  The  difficulty  about  a  cricket-ball  that 
has  been  thrown  with  a  scientific  "twist"  is,  that 
it  suddenly  changes  its  course  when  it  is  close  to  its 
target  and  comes  straight  for  the  mark  when  appar 
ently  it  was  going  overhead  or  to  one  side.  I  should 
not  be  able  to  protect  myself  from  such  balls  for 
half-an-hour,  or  less. 

Mr.  Chauncy  once  saw  "a  little  native  man" 
throw  a  cricket-ball  119  yards.  This  is  said  to  beat 
the  English  professional  record  by  thirteen  yards. 

We  have  all  seen  the  circus-man  bound  into  the 
air  from  a  spring-board  and  make  a  somersault  over 
eight  horses  standing  side  by  side.  Mr.  Chauncy 
saw  an  aboriginal  do  it  over  eleven  ;  and  was  assured 
that  he  had  sometimes  done  it  over  fourteen.  But 
what  is  that  to  this : 

"  I  saw  the  same  man  leap  from  the  ground,  and  in  going  over  ha 


Following  the  Equator  221 

dipped  his  head,  unaided  by  his  hands,  into  a  hat  placed  in  an  inverted 
position  on  the  top  of  the  head  of  another  man  sitting  upright  on  horse- 
back  —  both  man  and  horse  being  of  the  average  size.  The  native 
landed  on  the  other  side  of  the  horse  with  the  hat  fairly  on  his  head. 
The  prodigious  height  of  the  leap,  and  the  precision  with  which  it  was 
taken  so  as  to  enable  him  to  dip  his  head  into  the  hat,  exceeded  any 
feat  of  the  kind  I  have  ever  beheld.'* 

I  should  think  so  !  On  board  a  ship  lately  I  saw 
a  young  Oxford  athlete  run  four  steps  and  spring 
into  the  air  and  squirm  his  hips  by  a  side-twist  over 
a  bar  that  was  five  and  one-half  feet  high ;  but  he 
could  not  have  stood  still  and  cleared  a  bar  that  was 
four  feet  high.  I  know  this,  because  I  tried  it 
myself. 

One  can  see  now  where  the  kangaroo  learned  its  art. 

Sir  George  Grey  and  Mr.  Eyre  testify  that  the 
natives  dug  wells  fourteen  or  fifteen  feet  deep  and 
two  feet  in  diameter  at  the  bore  —  dug  them  in  the 
sand — wells  that  were  "  quite  circular,  carried 
straight  down,  and  the  ivork  beautifully  executed." 

Their  tools  were  their  hands  and  feet.  How  did 
they  throw  sand  out  from  such  a  depth?  How 
could  they  stoop  down  and  get  it,  with  only  two 
feet  of  space  to  stoop  in?  How  did  they  keep  that 
sand-pipe  from  caving  in  on  them?  I  do  not  know. 
Still,  they  did  manage  those  seeming  impossibilities. 
S\vallowed  the  sand,  maybe. 

Mr.  Chauncy  speaks  highly  of  the  patience  and 
skill  and  alert  intelligence  of  the  native  huntsman 
when  he  is  stalking  the  emu,  the  kangaroo,  and 

other  game : 
15* 


f  60  V-1  Nt-w  -        ,\         --. ,       .  s 

222  Following  the  Equator 

CA't  v*  '     n  **>\*~    (r  v"\  ^*  ^  A   v^  jj/j  t*  -•.,  j  i     / 

"As  he  walks  through  the  bush  his  step  is  light,  elastic,  and  noise- 
less  ;  every  track  on  the  earth  catches  his  keen  eye  ;  a  leaf,  or  fragment 
of  a  stick  turned,  or  a  blade  of  grass  recently  bent  by  the  tread  of  one 
of  the  lower  animals,  instantly  arrests  his  attention  ;  in  fact,  nothing 
escapes  his  quick  and  powerful  sight  on  the  ground,  in  the  trees,  or  in 
the  distance,  which  may  supply  him  with  a  meal  or  warn  him  of  danger. 
A  little  examination  of  the  trunk  of  a  tree  which  may  be  nearly  covered 
with  the  scratches  of  opossums  ascending  and  descending  is  sufficient  to 
inform  him  whether  one  went  up  the  night  before  without  coming  down 
again  or  not." 

Fenimore  Cooper  lost  his  chance.  He  would 
have  known  how  to  value  these  people.  He  wouldn't 
have  traded  the  dullest  of  them  for  the  brightest 
Mohawk  he  ever  invented. 

All  savages  draw  outline  pictures  upon  bark;  but 
the  resemblances  are  not  close,  and  expression  is 
usually  lacking.  But  the  Australian  aboriginal's 
pictures  of  animals  were  nicely  accurate  in  form, 
attitude,  carriage;  and  he  put  spirit  into  them,  and 
expression.  And  his  pictures  of  white  people  and 
natives  were  pretty  nearly  as  good  as  his  pictures 
of  the  other  animals.  He  dressed  his  whites  in  the 
fashion  of  their  day,  both  the  ladies  and  the  gentle 
men.  As  an  untaught  wielder  of  the  pencil  it  is  not 
likely  that  he  has  his  equal  among  savage  people. 

His  place  in  art  —  as  to  drawing,  not  color-work 
• — is  well  up,  all  things  considered.  His  art  is  not 
to  be  classified  with  savage  art  at  all,  but  on  a 
plane  two  degrees  above  it  and  one  degree  above  the 
lowest  plane  of  civilized  art.  To  be  exact,  his  place 
in  art  is  between  Botticelli  and  Du  Maurier.  That  is 
lo  say,  he  could  not  draw  as  well  as  Du  Maurier  but 


Following  the  Equator  223 

better  than  Botticelli.  In  feeling,  he  resembles 
both ;  also  in  grouping  and  in  his  preferences  in  the 
matter  of  subjects.  His  "  corrobboree "  of  the 
Australian  wilds  reappears  in  Du  Maurier's  Bel- 
gravian  ballrooms,  with  clothes  and  the  smirk  of 
civilization  added;  Botticelli's  "  Spring"  is  the  cor 
robboree  further  idealized,  but  with  fewer  clothes  and 
more  smirk.  And  well  enough  as  to  intention,  but 
—  my  word  ! 

The  aboriginal  can  make  a  fire  by  friction.  I 
have  tried  that. 

All  savages  are  able  to  stand  a  good  deal  of  physical 
pain.  The  Australian  aboriginal  has  this  quality  in 
a  well-developed  degree.  Do  not  read  the  follow 
ing  instances  if  horrors  are  not  pleasant  to  you. 
They  were  recorded  by  the  Rev.  Henry  N.  Wolloston, 
of  Melbourne,  who  had  been  a  surgeon  before  he 
became  a  clergyman : 

I.  "In  the  summer  of  1852  I  started  on  horseback  from  Albany, 
King  George's  Sound,  to  visit  at  Cape  Riche,  accompanied  by  a  native 
on  foot.  We  traveled  about  forty  miles  the  first  day,  then  camped  by  a 
water-hole  for  the  night.  After  cooking  and  eating  our  supper,  I 
observed  the  native,  who  had  said  nothing  to  me  on  the  subject,  collect 
the  hot  embers  of  the  fire  together,  and  deliberately  place  his  right  foot 
in  the  glowing  mass  for  a  moment,  then  suddenly  withdraw  it,  stamping 
on  the  ground  and  uttering  a  long-drawn  guttural  sound  of  mingled  pain 
and  satisfaction.  This  operation  he  repeated  several  times.  On  my 
inquiring  the  meaning  of  his  strange  conduct,  he  only  said,  '  Me  car 
penter-make  'em  ('I  am  mending  my  foot'),  and  then  showed  me  his 
charred  great  toe,  the  nail  of  which  had  been  torn  off  by  a  tea-tree 
stump,  in  which  it  had  been  caught  during  the  journey,  and  the  pain  of 
which  he  had  borne  with  stoical  composure  until  the  evening,  when  he 
had  an  opportunity  of  cauterizing  the  wound  in  the  primitive  manner 
above  described." 


224  Following  the  Equator 

And  he  proceeded  on  the  journey  the  next  day, 
*'  as  if  nothing  had  happened  " — and  walked  thirty 
miles.  It  was  a  strarge  idea,  to  keep  a  surgeon  and 
then  do  his  own  surgery. 

2.  "A  native  about  twenty-five  years  of  age  once  applied  to  me,  as 
a  doctor,  to  extract  the  wooden  barb  of  a  spear,  which,  during  a  fight  in 
the  bush  some  four  months  previously,  had  entered  his  chest,  just  miss 
ing  the  heart,  and  penetrated  the  viscera  to  a  considerable  depth.     The 
spear  had  been  cut  off,  leaving  the  barb  behind,  which  continued  to 
force  its  way  by  muscular  action  gradually  toward  the  back;   and  when 
I  examined  him  I  could  feel  a  hard  substance  between  the  ribs  below 
the  left  blade-bone.     I  made  a  deep  incision,  and  with  a  pair  of  forceps 
extracted  the  barb,  which  was  made,  as  usual,  of  hard  wood  about  four 
inches  long  and  from  half  an  inch  to  an  inch  thick.     It  was  very  smooth, 
and  partly  digested,  so  to  speak,  by  the  maceration  to  which  it  had  been 
exposed  during  its  four  months'  journey  through  the  body.     The  wound 
made  by  the  spear  had  long  since  healed,  leaving  only  a  small  cicatrix; 
and  after  the  operation,  which  the  native  bore  without  flinching,  he 
appeared  to  suffer  no  pain.      Indeed,  judging  from  his  good  state  of 
health,  the  presence  of  the  foreign  matter  did  not  materially  annoy  him. 
He  was  perfectly  well  in  a  few  days." 

But  No.  3  is  my  favorite.  Whenever  I  read  it  I 
seem  to  enjoy  all  that  the  patient  enjoyed  —  what 
ever  it  was : 

3.  "  Once  at  King  George's  Sound  a  native  presented  himself  to 
me  with  one  leg  only,  and  requested  me  to  supply  him  with  a  wooden 
leg.     He  had  traveled  in  this  maimed  state  about  ninety-six  miles,  for 
this  purpose.     I  examined  the  limb,  which  had  been  severed  just  below 
the  knee,  and  found  that  it  had  been  charred  by  fire,  while  about  two 
inches  of  the  partially  calcined  bone  protruded  through  the  flesh.     I  at 
once  removed  this  with  the  saw;    and  having  made  as  presentable  a 
stump  of  it  as  I  could,  covered  the  amputated  end  of  the  bone  with  a 
surrounding  of  muscle,  and  kept  the  patient  a  few  days  under  my  care 
to  allow  the  wound  to  heal.     On  inquiring,  the  native  told  me  that  in  a 
fight  with  other  blackfellows  a  spear  had  struck  his  leg  and  penetrated 


Following  the  Equator  225 

the  bone  below  the  knee.  Finding  it  was  serious,  he  had  recourse  to 
the  following  crude  and  barbarous  operation,  which  it  appears  is  not 
uncommon  among  these  people  in  their  native  state.  He  made  a  fire, 
and  dug  a  hole  in  the  earth  only  sufficiently  large  to  admit  his  leg,  and 
deep  enough  to  allow  the  wounded  part  to  be  on  a  level  with  the  surface 
of  the  ground.  He  then  surrounded  the  limb  with  the  live  coals  or 
charcoal,  which  was  replenished  until  the  leg  was  literally  burnt  off. 
The  cauterization  thus  applied  completely  checked  the  hemorrhage,  and 
he  was  able  in  a  day  or  two  to  hobble  down  to  the  Sound,  with  the  aid 
of  a  long  stout  stick,  although  he  was  more  than  a  week  on  the  road." 

But  he  was  a  fastidious  native.  He  soon  discarded 
the  wooden  leg  made  for  him  by  the  doctor,  because 
"  it  had  no  feeling  in  it."  It  must  have  had  as 
much  as  the  one  he  burnt  off,  I  should  think. 

So  much  for  the  Aboriginals.  It  is  difficult  for 
me  to  let  them  alone.  They  are  marvelously  inter 
esting  creatures.  For  a  quarter  of  a  century,  now, 
the  several  colonial  governments  have  housed  their 
remnants  in  comfortable  stations,  and  fed  them  well 
and  taken  good  care  of  them  in  every  way.  If  I  had 
found  this  out  while  I  was  in  Australia  I  could  have 
seen  some  of  those  people — but  I  didn't.  I  would 
walk  thirty  miles  to  see  a  stuffed  one. 

Australia  has  a  slang  of  its  own.  This  is  a  matter 
of  course.  The  vast  cattle  and  sheep  industries, 
the  strange  aspects  of  the  country,  and  the  strange 
native  animals,  brute  and  human,  are  matters  which 
would  naturally  breed  a  local  slang.  I  have  notes  of 
this  slang  somewhere,  but  at  the  moment  I  can  call 
to  mind  only  a  few  of  the  words  and  phrases.  They 
are  expressive  ones.  The  wide,  sterile,  unpeopled 
deserts  have  created  eloquent  phrases  like  **No 
15. 


226  Following  the  Equator 

Man's  Land  "  and  the  "Never-never  Country" — • 
also  this  felicitous  form:  "  She  lives  in  the  Never- 
never  Country  "  — that  is,  she  is  an  old  maid.  And 
this  one  is  not  without  merit:  **  heifer-paddock  " — 
young  ladies'  seminary.  "  Bail  up  "  and  "  stick  up  " 
—  equivalent  of  our  highwayman-term  to  "  hold  up  " 
a  stage-coach  or  a  train.  "New-chum"  is  the 
equivalent  of  our  "  tenderfoot  " — new  arrival. 

And  then  there  is  the  immortal  "My  word!" 
We  must  import  it.  "  M-y  word!"  In  cold  print 
it  is  the  equivalent  of  our  "  Ger-reat  Ccesar!" 
but  spoken  with  the  proper  Australian  unction  and 
fervency,  it  is  worth  six  of  it  for  grace  and  charm 
and  expressiveness.  Our  form  is  rude  and  explo 
sive  ;  it  is  not  suited  to  the  drawing-room  or  the 
heifer-paddock;  but  "  M-y  word /  "  is,  and  is  music 
to  the  ear,  too,  when  the  utterer  knows  how  to  say 
it.  I  saw  it  in  print  several  times  on  the  Pacific 
Ocean,  but  it  struck  me  coldly,  it  aroused  no  sym 
pathy.  That  was  because  it  was  the  dead  corpse  of 
the  thing,  the  soul  was  not  there  —  the  tones  were 
lacking  —  the  informing  spirit  —  the  deep  feeling  — 
the  eloquence.  But  the  first  time  I  heard  an  Austra 
lian  say  it,  it  was  positively  thrilling. 


CHAPTER    XXIII. 

Be  careless  in  your  dress  if  you  must,  but  keep  a  tidy  soul. 

— PudtVnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WE  left  Adelaide  in  due  course,  and  went  to 
Horsham,  in  the  colony  of  Victoria;  a  good 
deal  of  a  journey,  if  I  remember  rightly,  but  pleas 
ant.  Horsham  sits  in  a  plain  which  is  as  level  as  a 
floor  —  one  of  those  famous  dead  levels  which 
Australian  books  describe  so  often;  gray,  bare, 
somber,  melancholy,  baked,  cracked,  in  the  tedious 
long  drouths,  but  a  horizonless  ocean  of  vivid  green 
grass  the  day  after  a  rain.  A  country  town,  peace 
ful,  reposeful,  inviting,  full  of  snug  homes,  with 
garden  plots,  and  plenty  of  shrubbery  and  flowers. 
"Horsham,  October  //.  At  the  hotel.  The 
weather  divine.  Across  the  way,  in  front  of  the 
London  Bank  of  Australia,  is  a  very  handsome  cot- 
tonwood.  It  is  in  opulent  leaf,  and  every  leaf 
perfect.  The  full  power  of  the  on-rushing  spring 
is  upon  it,  and  I  imagine  I  can  see  it  grow.  Along 
side  the  bank  and  a  little  way  back  in  the  garden 
there  is  a  row  of  soaring  fountain-sprays  of  delicate 
feathery  foliage  quivering  in  the  breeze,  and  mottled 
o*  (227) 


228  Following  the  Equator 

with  flashes  of  light  that  shift  and  play  through  the 
mass  like  flash-lights  through  an  opal  —  a  most 
beautiful  tree,  and  a  striking  contrast  to  the  cotton- 
wood.  Every  leaf  of  the  cottonwood  is  distinctly 
defined  —  it  is  a  kodak  for  faithful,  hard,  unsenti 
mental  detail;  the  other  an  impressionist  picture, 
delicious  to  look  upon,  full  of  a  subtle  and  exquisite 
charm,  but  all  details  fused  in  a  swoon  of  vague  and 
soft  loveliness." 

It  turned  out,  upon  inquiry,  to  be  a  pepper  tree 
—  an  importation  from  China.  It  has  a  silky  sheen, 
soft  and  rich.  I  saw  some  that  had  long  red  bunches 
of  currant-like  berries  ambushed  among  the  foliage. 
At  a  distance,  in  certain  lights,  they  give  the  tree  a 
pinkish  tint  and  a  new  charm. 

There  is  an  agricultural  college  eight  miles  from 
Horsham.  We  were  driven  out  to  it  by  its  chief. 
The  conveyance  was  an  open  wagon;  the  time, 
noonday;  no  wind;  the  sky  without  a  cloud,  the 
sunshine  brilliant  —  and  the  mercury  at  92°  in  the 
shade.  In  some  countries  an  indolent  unsheltered 
drive  of  an  hour  and  a  half  under  such  conditions 
would  have  been  a  sweltering  and  prostrating  ex 
perience  ;  but  there  was  nothing  of  that  in  this  case. 
It  is  a  climate  that  is  perfect.  There  was  no  sense  of 
heat;  indeed,  there  was  no  heat;  the  air  was  fine 
and  pure  and  exhilarating;  if  the  drive  had  lasted 
half  a  day  I  think  we  should  not  have  felt  any  dis 
comfort,  or  grown  silent  or  droopy  or  tired.  Of 
course,  the  secret  of  it  was  the  exceeding  dryness  of 


Following  the  Equator  229 

the  atmosphere.  In  that  plain  112°  in  the  shade  is 
without  doubt  no  harder  upon  a  man  than  is  88°  or 
90°  in  New  York. 

The  road  lay  through  the  middle  of  an  empty  space 
which  seemed  to  me  to  be  a  hundred  yards  wide  be 
tween  the  fences.  I  was  not  given  the  width  in 
yards,  but  only  in  chains  and  perches  —  and  fur 
longs,  I  think.  I  would  have  given  a  good  deal  to 
know  what  the  width  was,  but  I  did  not  pursue  the 
matter.  I  think  it  is  best  to  put  up  with  informa 
tion  the  way  you  get  it;  and  seem  satisfied  with  it, 
and  surprised  at  it,  and  grateful  for  it,  and  say, 
"My  word!"  and  never  let  on.  It  was  a  wide 
space ;  I  could  tell  you  how  wide,  in  chains  and 
perches  and  furlongs  and  things,  but  that  would  not 
help  you  any.  Those  things  sound  well,  but  they 
are  shadowy  and  indefinite,  like  troy  weight  and 
avoirdupois  ;  nobody  knows  what  they  mean.  When 
you  buy  a  pound  of  a  drug  and  the  man  asks  you 
which  you  want,  troy  or  avoirdupois,  it  is  best  to 
say  "  Yes,"  and  shift  the  subject. 

They  said  that  the  wide  space  dates  from  the 
earliest  sheep  and  cattle-raising  days.  People  had 
to  drive  their  stock  long  distances  —  immense  jour 
neys —  from  worn-out  places  to  new  ones  where 
were  water  and  fresh  pasturage ;  and  this  wide  space 
had  to  be  left  in  grass  and  unfenced,  or  the  stock 
would  have  starved  to  death  in  the  transit. 

On  the  way  we  saw  the  usual  birds  —  the  beautiful 
little  green  parrots,  the  magpie,  and  some  others; 


230  Following  the  Equator 

and  also  the  slender  native  bird  of  modest  plumage 
and  the  eternally-forgetable  name  —  the  bird  that  is 
the  smartest  among  birds,  and  can  give  a  parrot  30 
to  I  in  the  game  and  then  talk  him  to  death.  I  can 
not  recall  that  bird's  name.  I  think  it  begins  with 
M.  I  wish  it  began  with  G.  or  something  that  a 
person  caji-.r^member. 

The  magpie ;was  out  in  great  force,  in  the  fields 
and  on  the  fences.  He  is  a  handsome  large  creature, 
with  snowy  white  decorations,  and  is  a  singer ;  he  has 
a  murmurous  rich  note  that  is  lovely.  He  was  once 
modest,  even  diffident;  but  he  lost  all  that  when  he 
found  out  that  he  was  Australia's  sole  musical  bird. 
He  has  talent,  and  cuteness,  and  impudence ;  and  in 
his  tame  state  he  is  a  most  satisfactory  pet — never 
coming  when  he  is  called,  always  coming  when  he 
isn't,  and  studying  disobedience  as  an  accomplish 
ment.  He  is  not  confined,  but  loafs  all  over  the 
house  and  grounds,  like  the  laughing  jackass.  I 
think  he  learns  to  talk,  I  know  he  learns  to  sing 
tunes,  and  his  friends  say  that  he  knows  how  to  steal 
without  learning.  I  was  acquainted  with  a  tame 
magpie  in  Melbourne.  He  had  lived  in  a  lady's 
house  several  years,  and  believed  he  owned  it.  The 
lady  had  tamed  him,  and  in  return  he  had  tamed  the 
lady.  He  was  always  on  deck  when  not  wanted, 
always  having  his  own  way,  always  tyrannizing  over 
the  dog,  and  always  making  the  cat's  life  a  slow  sor 
row  and  a  martyrdom.  He  knew  a  number  of  tunes 
and  could  sing  them  in  perfect  time  and  tune ;  and 


Following  the  Equator  231 

would  do  it,  too,  at  any  time  that  silence  was  wanted  ; 
and  then  encore  himself  and  do  it  again ;  but  if  he 
was  asked  to  sing  he  would  go  out  and  take  a  walk.  / 

It  was  long  believed  that  fruit  trees  would  not 
grow  in  that  baked  and  waterless  plain  around 
Horsham,  but  the  agricultural  college  has  dissipated 
that  idea.  Its  ample  nurseries  were  producing 
oranges,  apricots,  lemons,  almonds,  peaches,  cher 
ries,  48  varieties  of  apples  —  in  fact,  all  manner  of 
fruits,  and  in  abundance.  The  trees  did  not  seem 
to  miss  the  water ;  they  were  in  vigorous  and  flour 
ishing  condition. 

Experiments  are  made  with  different  soils,  to  see 
what  things  thrive  best  in  them  and  what  climates 
are  best  for  them.  A  man  who  is  ignorantly  trying 
to  produce  upon  his  farm  things  not  suited  to  its  soil 
and  its  other  conditions  can  make  a  journey  to  the 
college  from  anywhere  in  Australia,  and  go  back 
with  a  change  of  scheme  which  will  make  his  farm 
productive  and  profitable. 

There  were  forty  pupils  there  — a  few  of -them 
farmers,  relearning  their  trade,  the  rest  young  men 
mainly  from  the  cities — 'novices.  It  seemed  a 
strange  thing  that  an  agricultural  college  should  have 
an  attraction  for  city-bred  youths,  but  such  is  the 
fact.  They  are  good  stuff,  too  ;  they  are  above  the 
agricultural  average  of  intelligence,  and  they  come 
without  any  inherited  prejudices  in  favor  of  hoary 
ignorances  made  sacred  by  long  descent. 

The  students  work  all  day  in  the  fields,  the  nur- 


232  Following  the  Equator 

series,  and  the  shearing-sheds,  learning  and  doing  all 
the  practical  work  of  the  business  —  three  days  in  a 
week.  On  the  other  three  they  study  and  hear 
lectures.  They  are  taught  the  beginnings  of  such 
sciences  as  bear  upon  agriculture  —  like  chemistry, 
for  instance.  We  saw  the  sophomore  class  in  sheep- 
shearing  shear  a  dozen  sheep.  They  did  it  by  hand, 
not  with  the  machine.  The  sheep  was  seized  and 
flung  down  on  his  side  and  held  there;  and  the 
students  took  off  his  coat  with  great  celerity  and 
adroitness.  Sometimes  they  clipped  off  a  sample 
of  the  sheep,  but  that  is  customary  with  shearers, 
and  they  don't  mind  it;  they  don't  even  mind  it  as 
much  as  the  sheep.  They  dab  a  splotch  of  sheep- 
dip  on  the  place  and  go  right  ahead. 

The  coat  of  wool  was  unbelievably  thick.  Before 
the  shearing  the  sheep  looked  like  the  fat  woman  in 
the  circus;  after  it  he  looked  like  a  bench.  He  was 
clipped  to  the  skin ;  and  smoothly  and  uniformly. 
The  fleece  comes  from  him  all  in  one  piece  and  has 
the  spread  of  a  blanket. 

The  college  was  flying  the  Australian  flag  —  the 
gridiron  of  England  smuggled  up  in  the  northwest 
corner  of  a  big  red  field  that  had  the  random  stars  of 
the  Southern  Cross  wandering  around  over  it. 

From  Horsham  we  went  to  Stawell.  By  rail.  Still 
in  the  colony  of  Victoria.  Stawell  is  in  the  gold- 
mining  country.  In  the  bank-safe  was  half  a  peck 
of  surface  gold  —  gold  dust,  grain  gold  ;  rich ;  pure 
in  fact,  and  pleasant  to  sift  through  one's  fingers; 


Following  the  Equator  233 

and  would  be  pleasanter  if  it  would  stick.  And 
there  were  a  couple  of  gold  bricks,  very  heavy  to 
handle,  and  worth  $7,500  apiece.  They  were  from 
a  very  valuable  quartz  mine ;  a  lady  owns  two-thirds 
of  it;  she  has  an  income  of  $75,000  a  month  from 
it,  and  is  able  to  keep  house. 

The  Stawell  region  is  not  productive  of  gold  only; 
it  has  great  vineyards,  and  produces  exceptionally 
fine  wines.  One  of  these  vineyards  —  the  Great 
Western,  owned  by  Mr.  Irving — is  regarded  as  a 
model.  Its  product  has  reputation  abroad.  It 
yields  a  choice  champagne  and  a  fine  claret,  and  its 
heck  took  a  prize  in  France  two  or  three  years  ago. 
The  champagne  is  kept  in  a  maze  of  passages  under 
ground,  cut  in  the  rock,  to  secure  it  an  even  temper 
ature  during  the  three-year  term  required  to  perfect 
it.  In  those  vaults  I  saw  120,000  bottles  of  cham 
pagne.  The  colony  of  Victoria  has  a  population  of 
1,000,000,  and  those  people  are  said  to  drink 
25,000,000  bottles  of  champagne  per  year.  The 
dryest  community  on  the  earth.  The  government 
has  lately  reduced  the  duty  upon  foreign  wines. 
That  is  one  of  the  unkindnesses  of  Protection.  A 
man  invests  years  of  work  and  a  vast  sum  of  money 
in  a  worthy  enterprise,  upon  the  faith  of  existing 
laws;  then  the  law  is  changed,  and  the  man  is 
robbed  by  his  own  government. 

On  the  way  back  to  Stawell  we  had  a  chance  to 
see  a  group  of  bowlders  called  the  Three  Sisters  —  a 
curiosity  oddly  located ;  for  it  was  upon  high  ground, 


234  Following  the  Equator 

with  the  land  sloping  away  from  it,  and  no  height 
above  it  from  whence  the  bowlders  could  have 
rolled  down.  Relics  of  an  early  ice-drift,  perhaps. 
They  are  noble  bowlders.  One  of  them  has  the  size 
and  smoothness  and  plump  sphericity  of  a  balloon 
of  the  biggest  pattern.  The  road  led  through  a 
forest  of  great  gum-trees,  lean  and  scraggy  and  sor 
rowful.  The  road  was  cream-white  —  a  clayey  kind 
of  earth,  apparently. 

Along  it  toiled  occasional  freight  wagons,  drawn 
by  long  double  files  of  oxen.  Those  wagons  were 
going  a  journey  of  two  hundred  miles,  I  was  told, 
and  were  running  a  successful  opposition  to  the  rail 
way!  The  railways  are  owned  and  run  by  the 
government. 

Those  sad  gums  stood  up  out  of  the  dry  white 
clay,  pictures  of  patience  and  resignation.  It  is  a 
tree  that  can  get  along  without  water ;  still  it  is  fond 
of  it — ravenously  so.  It  is  a  very  intelligent  tree 
and  will  detect  the  presence  of  hidden  water  at  a 
distance  of  fifty  feet,  and  send  out  slender  long 
root-fibres  to  prospect  it.  They  will  find  it ;  and 
will  also  get  at  it  —  even  through  a  cement  wall  six 
inches  thick.  Once  a  cement  water-pipe  under 
ground  at  Stawell  began  to  gradually  reduce  its  out 
put,  and  finally  ceased  altogether  to  deliver  water. 
Upon  examining  into  the  matter  it  was  found  stopped 
up,  wadded  compactly  with  a  mass  of  root  fibres, 
delicate  and  hair-like.  How  this  stuff  had  gotten 
into  the  pipe  was  a  puzzle  for  some  little  time; 


Following  the  Equator  235 

finally  it  was  found  that  it  had  crept  in  through  a 
crack  that  was  almost  invisible  to  the  eye.  A  gum 
tree  forty  feet  away  had  tapped  the  pipe  and  was 
drinking  the  water. 


CHAPTER  XXIV. 

There  is  no  such  thing  as  "  the  Queen's  English."    The  property  has  gone 
into  the  hands  of  a  joint  stock  company  and  we  own  the  bulk  of  the  shares  I 
— PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

FREQUENTLY,  in  Australia,  one  has  cloud-effects 
of  an  unfamiliar  sort.  We  had  this  kind  of 
scenery,  finely  staged,  all  the  way  to  Ballarat.  Con 
sequently  we  saw  more  sky  than  country  on  that  jour 
ney.  At  one  time  a  great  stretch  of  the  vault  was 
densely  flecked  with  wee  ragged-edged  flakes  of 
painfully  white  cloud-stuff,  all  of  one  shape  and  size, 
and  equidistant  apart,  with  narrow  cracks  of  adorable 
blue  showing  between.  The  whole  was  suggestive  of 
a  hurricane  of  snow-flakes  drifting  across  the  skies. 
By  and  by  these  flakes  fused  themselves  together  in 
interminable  lines,  with  shady  faint  hollows  between 
the  lines,  the  long  satin-surfaced  rollers  following 
each  other  in  simulated  movement,  and  enchant- 
ingly  counterfeiting  the  majestic  march  of  a  flowing 
sea.  Later,  the  sea  solidified  itself;  then  gradually 
broke  up  its  mass  into  innumerable  lofty  white  pillars 
of  about  one  size,  and  ranged  these  across  the  firma 
ment,  in  receding  and  fading  perspective,  in  the  sim 
ilitude  of  a  stupendous  colonnade  —  a  mirage  without 
a  doubt  flung  from  the  far  Gates  of  the  Hereafter. 

(236) 


Following  the  Equator  237 

The  approaches  to  Ballarat  were  beautiful.  The 
features,  great  green  expanses  of  rolling  pasture- 
land,  bisected  by  eye-contenting  hedges  of  com 
mingled  new-gold  and  old-gold  gorse — and  a  lovely 
lake.  One  must  put  in  the  pause,  there,  to  fetch  the 
reader  up  with  a  slight  jolt,  and  keep  him  from  glid 
ing  by  without  noticing  the  lake.  One  must  notice 
it;  for  a  lovely  lake  is  not  as  common  a  thing  along 
the  railways  of  Australia  as  are  the  dry  places. 
Ninety-two  in  the  shade  again,  but  balmy  and  com 
fortable,  fresh  and  bracing.  A  perfect  climate. 

Forty-five  years  ago  the  site  now  occupied  by  the 
City  of  Ballarat  was  a  sylvan  solitude  as  quiet  as 
Eden  and  as  lovely.  Nobody  had  ever  heard  of  it. 
On  the  25th  of  August,  1851,  the  first  great  gold- 
strike  made  in  Australia  was  made  here.  The 
wandering  prospectors  who  made  it  scraped  up  two 
pounds  and  a  half  of  gold  the  first  day  —  worth  $600. 
A  few  days  later  the  place  was  a  hive  —  a  town. 
The  news  of  the  strike  spread  everywhere  in  a  sort 
of  instantaneous  way  —  spread  like  a  flash  to  the 
very  ends  of  the  earth.  A  celebrity  so  prompt  and 
so  universal  has  hardly  been  paralleled  in  history, 
perhaps.  It  was  as  if  the  name  BALLARAT  had 
suddenly  been  written  on  the  sky,  where  all  the 
world  could  read  it  at  once. 

The  smaller  discoveries  made  in  the  colony  of  New 
South  Wales  three  months  before  had  already  started 
emigrants  toward  Australia;  they  had  been  corning 

as  a  stream,  but  they  came   as   a  flood,   now.     A 
16* 


238  Following  the  Equator 

hundred  thousand  people  poured  into  Melbourne 
from  England  and  other  countries  in  a  single  month, 
and  flocked  away  to  the  mines.  The  crews  of  the 
ships  that  brought  them  flocked  with  them ;  the 
clerks  in  the  government  offices  followed ;  so  did  the 
cooks,  the  maids,  the  coachmen,  the  butlers,  and 
the  other  domestic  servants ;  so  did  the  carpenters, 
the  smiths,  the  plumbers,  the  painters,  the  reporters, 
the  editors,  the  lawyers,  the  clients,  the  barkeepers, 
the  bummers,  the  blacklegs,  the  thieves,  the  loose 
women,  the  grocers,  the  butchers,  the  bakers,  the 
doctors,  the  druggists,  the  nurses ;  so  did  the  police  ; 
even  officials  of  high  and  hitherto  envied  place  threw 
up  their  positions  and  joined  the  procession.  This 
roaring  avalanche  swept  out  of  Melbourne  and  left  it 
desolate,  Sunday-like,  paralyzed,  everything  at  a 
stand-still,  the  ships  lying  idle  at  anchor,  all  signs  of 
life  departed,  all  sounds  stilled  save  the  rasping  of 
the  cloud-shadows  as  they  scraped  across  the  vacant 
streets. 

That  grassy  and  leafy  paradise  at  Ballarat  was  soon 
ripped  open,  and  lacerated  and  scarified  and  gutted, 
in  the  feverish  search  for  its  hidden  riches.  There 
is  nothing  like  surface-mining  to  snatch  the  graces 
and  beauties  and  benignities  out  of  a  paradise,  and 
make  an  odious  and  repulsive  spectacle  of  it. 

What  fortunes  were  made !  Immigrants  got  rich 
while  the  ship  unloaded  and  reloaded  —  and  went 
back  home  for  good  in  the  same  cabin  they  had 
come  out  in  !  Not  all  of  them.  Only  some.  I  saw 


Following  the  Equator  239 

the  others  in  Ballarat  myself,  forty-five  years  later 
—  what  were  left  of  them  by  time  and  death  and  the 
disposition  to  rove.  They  were  young  and  gay, 
then;  they  are  patriarchal  and  grave,  now;  and 
they  do  not  get  excited  any  more.  They  talk  of 
the  Past.  They  live  in  it.  Their  life  is  a  dream,  a 
retrospection. 

Ballarat  was  a  great  region  for  "  nuggets/'  No 
such  nuggets  were  found  in  California  as  Ballarat 
produced.  In  fact,  the  Ballarat  region  has  yielded 
the  largest  ones  known  to  history.  Two  of  them 
weighed  about  180  pounds  each,  and  together  were 
worth  $90,000.  They  were  offered  to  any  poor 
person  who  would  shoulder  them  and  carry  them 
away.  Gold  was  so  plentiful  that  it  made  people 
liberal  like  that. 

Ballarat  was  a  swarming  city  of  tents  in  the  early 
days.  Everybody  was  happy,  for  a  time,  and 
apparently  prosperous.  Then  came  trouble.  The 
government  swooped  down  with  a  mining  tax.  And 
in  its  worst  form,  too;  for  it  was  not  a  tax  upon 
what  the  miner  had  taken  out,  but  upon  what  he  was 
going  to  take  out  —  if  he  could  find  it.  It  was  a 
license  tax  —  license  to  work  his  claim  —  and  it  had 
to  be  paid  before  he  could  begin  digging. 

Consider  the  situation.  No  business  is  so  uncer 
tain  as  surface-mining.  Your  claim  may  be  good, 
and  it  may  be  worthless.  It  may  make  you  well  off 
in  a  month ;  and  then  again  you  may  have  to  dig 
and  slave  for  half  a  year,  at  heavy  expense,  only  to 


240  Following  the  Equator 

find  out  at  last  that  the  gold  is  not  there  in  cost-pay 
ing  quantity,  and  that  your  time  and  your  hard  work 
have  been  thrown  away.  It  might  be  wise  policy  to 
advance  the  miner  a  monthly  sum  to  encourage  him 
to  develop  the  country's  riches;  but  to  tax  him 
monthly  in  advance  instead  —  why,  such  a  thing  was 
never  dreamed  of  in  America.  There,  neither  the 
claim  itself  nor  its  products,  howsoever  rich  or 
poor,  were  taxed. 

The  Ballarat  miners  protested,  petitioned,  com 
plained  —  it  was  of  no  use ;  the  government  held  its 
ground,  and  went  on  collecting  the  tax.  And  not 
by  pleasant  methods,  but  by  ways  which  must  have 
been  very  galling  to  free  people,  The  rumblings  of 
a  coming  storm  began  to  be  audible. 

By  and  by  there  was  a  result;  and  I  think  it  may 
be  called  the  finest  thing  in  Australasian  history.  It 
was  a-'fevolutiojy —  small  in  size,  but  great  politically  ; 
it  was" a~" strike  for  liberty,  a  struggle  for  a  principle, 
a  stand  against  injustice  and  oppression.  It  was  the 
Barons  and  John,  over  again;  it  was  Hampden  and 
Ship-Money;  it  was  Concord  and  Lexington; 
small  beginnings,  all  of  them,  but  all  of  them  great 
in  political  results,  all  of  them  epoch-making.  It  is 
another  instance  of  a  victory  won  by  a  lost  battle. 
It  adds  an  honorable  page  to  history;  the  people 
know  it  and  are  proud  of  it.  They  keep  green  the 
memory  of  the  men  who  fell  at  the  Eureka  Stockade, 
and  Peter  Lalor  has  his  monument. 

The    surface-soil    of    Ballarat   was    full    of    gold. 


Following  the  Equator  241 

This  soil  the  miners  ripped  and  tore  and  trenched 
and  harried  and  disemboweled,  and  made  it  yield  up 
its  immense  treasure.  Then  they  went  down  into 
the  earth  with  deep  shafts,  seeking  the  gravelly  beds 
of  ancient  rivers  and  brooks  —  and  found  them. 
They  followed  the  courses  of  these  streams,  and 
gutted  them,  sending  the  gravel  up  in  buckets  to  the 
upper  world,  and  washing  out  of  it  its  enormous  de 
posits  of  gold,,  The  next  biggest  of  the  two  monster 
nuggets  mentioned  above  came  from  an  old  river- 
channel  1 80  feet  under  ground, 

Finally  the  quartz  lodes  were  attacked.  That  is 
not  poor  man's  mining.  Quartz-mining  and  milling 
require  capital,  and  staying-power,  and  patience. 
Big  companies  were  formed,  and  for  several  decades, 
now,  the  lodes  have  been  successfully  worked,  and 
have  yielded  great  wealth.  Since  the  gold  discovery 
in  1853  the  Ballarat  mines  — taking  the  three  kinds 
of  mining  together  —  have  contributed  to  the  world's 
pocket  something  over  three  hundred  millions  of  dol 
lars,  which  is  to  say  that  this  nearly  invisible  little 
spot  on  the  earth's  surface  has  yielded  about  one- 
fourth  as  much  gold  in  forty-four  years  as  all  Cali 
fornia  has  yielded  in  forty-seven.  The  Californian 
aggregate,  from  1848  to  1895,  inclusive,  as  reported 
by  the  Statistician  of  the  United  States  Mint,  is 
$1,265,217,217. 

A  citizen  told  me  a  curious  thing  about  those 
mines.  With  all  my  experience  of  mining  I  had 
never  heard  of  anything  of  the  sort  before.  The 
16* 


242  Following  the  Equator 

main  gold  reef  runs  about  north  and  south  —  of 
course  —  for  that  is  the  custom  of  a  rich  gold  reef. 
At  Ballarat  its  course  is  between  walls  of  slate. 
Now  the  citizen  told  me  that  throughout  a  stretch 
of  twelve  miles  along  the  reef,  the  reef  is  crossed 
at  intervals  by  a  straight  black  streak  of  a  carbona 
ceous  nature  —  a  streak  in  the  slate;  a  streak  no 
thicker  than  a  pencil  —  and  that  wherever  it  crosses 
the  reef  you  will  certainly  find  gold  at  the  junction. 
It  is  called  the  Indicator.  Thirty  feet  on  each  side 
of  the  Indicator  (and  down  in  the  slate,  of  course)  is 
a  still  finer  streak  —  a  streak  as  fine  as  a  pencil  mark ; 
and  indeed,  that  is  its  name  —  Pencil  Mark.  When 
ever  you  find  the  Pencil  Mark  you  know  that  thirty 
feet  from  it  is  the  Indicator;  you  measure  the 
distance,  excavate,  find  the  Indicator,  trace  it 
straight  to  the  reef,  and  sink  your  shaft;  your 
fortune  is  made,  for  certain.  If  that  is  true,  it  is 
curious.  And  it  is  curious  any  way. 

Ballarat  is  a  town  of  only  40,000  population ;  and 
yet,  since  it  is  in  Australia,  it  has  every  essential  of 
an  advanced  and  enlightened  big  city.  This  is  pure 
matter  of  course.  I  must  stop  dwelling  upon  these 
things.  It  is  hard  to  keep  from  dwelling  upon  them, 
though ;  for  it  is  difficult  to  get  away  from  the  sur 
prise  of  it.  I  will  let  the  other  details  go,  this  time, 
but  I  must  allow  myself  to  mention  that  this  little 
town  has  a  park  of  326  acres;  a  flower  garden  of 
83  acres,  with  an  elaborate  and  expensive  fernery  in 
it  and  some  costly  and  unusually  fine  statuary;  and 


Following  the  Equator  243 

an  artificial  lake  covering  600  acres,  equipped  with 
a  fleet  of  200  shells,  small  sail  boats,  and  little  steam 
yachts. 

At  this  point  I  strike  out  some  other  praiseful 
things  which  I  was  tempted  to  add.  I  do  not  strike 
them  out  because  they  were  not  true  or  not  well  said, 
but  because  I  find  them  better  said  by  another  man 
• — and  a  man  more  competent  to  testify,  too,  be 
cause  he  belongs  on  the  ground,  and  knows.  I  clip 
them  from  a  chatty  speech  delivered  some  years  ago 
by  Mr.  William  Little,  who  was  at  that  time  mayor 
of  Ballarat : 

"The  language  of  our  citizens,  in  this  as  in  other  parts  of  Australasia, 
is  mostly  healthy  Anglo-Saxon,  free  from  Americanisms,  vulgarisms, 
and  the  conflicting  dialects  of  our  Fatherland,  and  is  pure  enough  to 
suit  a  Trench  or  a  Latham.  Our  youth,  aided  by  climatic  influence, 
are  in  point  of  physique  and  comeliness  unsurpassed  in  the  Sunny 
South.  Our  young  men  are  well  ordered;  and  our  maidens,  'not 
stepping  over  the  bounds  of  modesty,'  are  as  fair  as  Psyches,  dispensing 
smiles  as  charming  as  November  flowers." 

The  closing  clause  has  the  seeming  of  a  rather 
frosty  compliment,  but  that  is  apparent  only,  not  real. 
November  is  summer-time  there.  His  compliment 
to  the  local  prrity  of  the  language  is  warranted. 
It  is  quite  free  from  impurities;  this  is  acknowl 
edged  far  and  wide.  As  in  the  German  Empire  all 
cultivated  people  claim  to  speak  Hanoverian  German, 
so  in  Australasia  all  cultivated  people  claim  to 
speak  Ballarat  English.  Even  in  England  this  cult 
has  made  considerable  progress,  and  now  that  it  is 
favored  by  the  two  great  Universities,  the  time  is  not 
p* 


244  Following  the  Equator 

far  away  when  Ballarat  English  will  come  into  gen 
eral  use  among  the  educated  classes  of  Great  Britain 
at  large.  Its  great  merit  is,  that  it  is  shorter  than 
ordinary  English  —  that  is,  it  is  more  compressed. 
At  first  you  have  some  difficulty  in  understanding 
it  when  it  is  spoken  as  rapidly  as  the  orator  whom 
I  have  quoted  speaks  it.  An  illustration  will  show 
what  I  mean.  When  he  called  and  I  handed  him  a 
chair,  he  bowed  and  said : 

"Q." 

Presently,  when  we  were  lighting  our  cigars,  he 
held  a  match  to  mine  and  I  said : 

"  Thank  you,"  and  he  said  : 

"Km." 

Then  I  saw.  Q  is  the  end  of  the  phrase  "  I  thank 
you."  Km  is  the  end  of  the  phrase  '  You  are  wel 
come."  Mr.  Little  puts  no  emphasis  upon  either  of 
them,  but  delivers  them  so  reduced  that  they  hardly 
have  a  sound.  All  Ballarat  English  is  like  that,  and 
the  effect  is  very  soft  and  pleasant;  it  takes  all  the 
hardness  and  harshness  out  of  our  tongue  and  gives 
to  it  a  delicate  whispery  and  vanishing  cadence  which 
charms  the  ear  like  the  faint  rustling  of  the  forest 
leaves. 


CHAPTER   XXV. 

"  Classic."    A  book  which  people  praise  and  don't  read. 

— Pudd'n/iead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

ON  the  rail  again  — bound  for  Bendigo.  From 
diary: 

October  23.  Got  up  at  6,  left  at  7.30;  soon 
reached  Castlemaine,  one  of  the  rich  gold-fields  of 
the  early  days ;  waited  several  hours  for  a  train ; 
left  at  3.40  and  reached  Bendigo  in  an  hour.  For 
comrade,  a  Catholic  priest  who  was  better  than  I 
was,  but  didn't  seem  to  know  it  —  a  man  full  of 
graces  of  the  heart,  the  mind,  and  the  spirit;  a 
lovable  man.  He  will  rise.  He  will  be  a  Bishop 
some  day.  Later  an  Archbishop.  Later  a  Cardinal. 
Finally  an  Archangel,  I  hope.  And  then  he  will 
recall  me  when  I  say,  "  Do  you  remember  that  trip 
we  made  from  Ballarat  to  Bendigo,  when  you  were 
nothing  but  Father  C.,  and  I  was  nothing  to  what  I 
am  now?"  It  has  actually  taken  nine  hours  to 
come  from  Ballarat  to  Bendigo.  We  could  have 
saved  seven  by  walking.  However,  there  was  no 
hurry. 

Bendigo  was  another  of  the  rich  strikes  of  the 

(245) 


246  Following  the  Equator 

early  days.  It  does  a  great  quartz-mining  business, 
now — that  business  which,  more  than  any  other 
that  I  know  of,  teaches  patience,  and  requires  grit 
and  a  steady  nerve.  The  town  is  full  of  towering 
chimney-stacks  and  hoisting-works,  and  looks  like 
a  petroleum-city.  Speaking  of  patience ;  for  ex 
ample,  one  of  the  local  companies  went  steadily  on 
with  its  deep  borings  and  searchings  without  show 
of  gold  or  a  penny  of  reward  for  eleven  years  — 
then  struck  it,  and  became  suddenly  rich.  The 
eleven  years'  work  had  cost  $55,000,  and  the  first 
gold  found  was  a  grain  the  size  of  a  pin's  head.  It 
is  kept  under  locks  and  bars,  as  a  precious  thing, 
and  is  reverently  shown  to  the  visitor,  "hats  off." 
When  I  saw  it  I  had  not  heard  its  history. 

"  It  is  gold.  Examine  it  —  take  the  glass.  Now 
how  much  should  you  say  it  is  worth?" 

I  said: 

"  I  should  say  about  two  cents;  or  in  your  English 
dialect,  four  farthings." 

44  Well,  it  cost  ^u, ooo." 

"Oh,  come!" 

"Yes,  it  did.  Ballarat  and  Bendigo  have  pro 
duced  the  three  monumental  nuggets  of  the  world, 
and  this  one  is  the  monumentalest  one  of  the  three. 
The  other  two  represent  ^9,000  apiece;  this  one  a 
couple  of  thousand  more.  It  is  small,  and  not 
much  to  look  at,  but  it  is  entitled  to  its  name  — 
Adam.  It  is  the  Adam-nugget  of  this  mine,  and  its 
children  run  up  into  the  millions." 


Following  the  Equator  247 

Speaking  of  patience  again,  another  of  the  mines 
was  worked,  under  heavy  expenses,  during  17  years 
before  pay  was  struck,  and  still  another  one  com 
pelled  a  wait  of  2 1  years  before  pay  was  struck ; 
then,  in  both  instances,  the  outlay  was  all  back  in  a 
year  or  two,  with  compound  interest. 

Bendigo  has  turned  out  even  more  gold  than 
Ballarat.  The  two  together  have  produced  $650,- 
000,000  worth  —  which  is  half  as  much  as  California 
produced. 

It  was  through  Mr.  Blank  —  not  to  go  into  par 
ticulars  about  his  name  —  it  was  mainly  through  Mr. 
Blank  that  my  stay  in  Bendigo  was  made  memorably 
pleasant  and  interesting.  He  explained  this  to  me 
himself.  He  told  me  that  it  was  through  his  in 
fluence  that  the  city  government  invited  me  to  the 
town-hall  to  hear  complimentary  speeches  and  re 
spond  to  them ;  that  it  was  through  his  influence 
that  I  had  been  taken  on  a  long  pleasure-drive 
through  the  city  and  shown  its  notable  features ; 
that  it  was  through  his  influence  that  I  was  invited 
to  visit  the  great  mines ;  that  it  was  through  his  in 
fluence  that  I  was  taken  to  the  hospital  and  allowed 
to  see  the  convalescent  Chinaman  who  had  been 
attacked  at  midnight  in  his  lonely  hut  eight  weeks 
before  by  robbers,  and  stabbed  forty-six  times  and 
scalped  besides;  that  it  was  through  his  influence 
that  when  I  arrived  this  awful  spectacle  of  piecings 
and  patchings  and  bandagings  was  sitting  up  in  his 
cot  letting  on  to  read  one  of  my  books;  that  it  was 

kt&A      H, 


248  Following  the  Equator 

through  his  influence  that  efforts  had  been  made  to 
get  the  Catholic  Archbishop  of  Bendigo  to  invite  me 
to  dinner;  that  it  was  through  his  influence  that 
efforts  had  been  made  to  get  the  Anglican  Bishop 
of  Bendigo  to  ask  me  to  supper ;  that  it  was  through 
his  influence  that  the  dean  of  the  editorial  fraternity 
had  driven  me  through  the  woodsy  outlying  country 
and  shown  me,  from  the  summit  of  Lone  Tree  Hill, 
the  mightiest  and  loveliest  expanse  of  forest-clad 
mountain  and  valley  that  I  had  seen  in  all  Australia. 
And  when  he  asked  me  what  had  most  impressed 
me  in  Bendigo  and  I  answered  and  said  it  was  the 
taste  and  the  public  spirit  which  had  adorned  the 
streets  with  105  miles  of  shade  trees,  he  said  that  it 
was  through  his  influence  that  it  had  been  done. 

But  I  am  not  representing  him  quite  correctly. 
He  did  not.  say  it  was  through  his  influence  that  all 
these  things  had  happened  —  for  that  would  have 
been  coarse;  he  merely  conveyed  that  idea;  con 
veyed  it  so  subtly  that  I  only  caught  it  fleetingly,  as 
one  catches  vagrant  faint  breaths  of  perfume  when 
one  traverses  the  meadows  in  summer;  conveyed  it 
without  offense  and  without  any  suggestion  of  egoism 
or  ostentation  -^—  but  conveyed  it,  nevertheless. 

He  was  an  Irishman ;  an  educated  gentleman ; 
grave,  and  kindly,  and  courteous;  a  bachelor,  and 
about  forty-five  or  possibly  fifty  years  old,  appar 
ently.  He  called  upon  me  at  the  hotel,  and  it  was 
there  that  we  had  this  talk.  He  made  me  like  him, 
and  did  it  without  trouble.  This  was  partly  through 


Following  the  Equator  249 

his  winning  and  gentle  ways,  but  mainly  through 
the  amazing  familiarity  with  my  books  which  his 
conversation  showed.  He  was  down  to  date  with 
them,  too ;  and  if  he  had  made  them  the  study  of 
his  life  he  could  hardly  have  been  better  posted  as 
to  their  contents  than  he  was.  He  made  me  better 
satisfied  with  myself  than  I  had  ever  been  before. 
It  was  plain  that  he  had  a  deep  fondness  for  humor, 
yet  he  never  laughed ;  he  never  even  chuckled ;  in 
fact,  humor  could  not  win  to  outward  expression  on 
his  face  at  all.  No,  he  was  always  grave  —  tenderly, 
pensively  grave;  but  he  made  me  laugh,  all  along; 
and  this  was  very  trying — and  very  pleasant  at  the 
same  time  —  for  it  was  at  quotations  from  my  own 
books. 

When  he  was  going,  he  turned  and  said : 
*  You  don't  remember  me?" 

"  I?     Why,  no.      Have  we  met  before?" 

41  No,  it  was  a  matter  of  correspondence." 

"  Correspondence?" 

14  Yes,  many  years  ago.  Twelve  or  fifteen.  Oh, 
longer  than  that.  But  of  course  you — "  A 
musing  pause.  Then  he  said  : 

"  Do  you  remember  Corrigan  Castle?" 

"N  —  no,  I  believe  I  don't.  I  don't  seem  tc 
recall  the  name." 

He  waited  a  moment,  pondering,  with  the  door 
knob  in  his  hand,  then  started  out;  but  turned  back 
and  said  that  I  had  once  been  interested  in  Corrigan 
Castle,  and  asked  me  if  I  would  go  with  him  to  his 


250  Following  the  Equator 

quarters  in  the  evening  and  take  a  hot  Scotch  and 
talk  it  over.  I  was  a  teetotaler  and  liked  relaxation, 
so  I  said  I  would. 

We  drove  from  the  lecture-hall  together  about 
half-past  ten.  He  had  a  most  comfortably  and 
tastefully  furnished  parlor,  with  good  pictures  on 
the  walls,  Indian  and  Japanese  ornaments  on  the 
mantel,  and  here  and  there,  and  books  everywhere  — 
largely  mine;  which  made  me  proud.  The  light  was 
brilliant,  the  easy  chairs  were  deep-cushioned,  the 
arrangements  for  brewing  and  smoking  were  all 
there.  We  brewed  and  lit  up ;  then  he  passed  a 
sheet  of  note-paper  to  me  and  said : 

"  Do  you  remember  that?" 

"Oh,  yes,  indeed!"* 

The  paper  was  of  a  sumptuous  quality.  At  the  top 
was  a  twisted  and  interlaced  monogram  printed  from 
steel  dies  in  gold  and  blue  and  red,  in  the  ornate 
English  fashion  of  long  years  ago ;  and  under  it,  in 
neat  gothic  capitals,  was  this — printed  in  blue: 

THE  MARK  TWAIN  CLUB 
CORRIGAN  CASTLE 

187.. 

*'  My !"  said  I,  "  how  did  you  come  by  this?" 

'"I  was  President  of  it." 

**  No  !  — you  don't  mean  it." 

"It  is  true.  I  was  its  first  President.  I  was  re- 
elected  annually  as  long  as  its  meetings  were  held  in 
my  castle  —  Corrigan  —  which  was  five  years." 


Following  the  Equator  251 

Then  he  showed  me  an  album  with  twenty-three 
photographs  of  me  in  it.  Five  of  them  were  of  old 
dates,  the  others  of  various  later  crops ;  the  list  closed 
with  a  picture  taken  by  Falk  in  Sydney  a  month 
before. 

4 'You  sent  us  the  first  five;  the  rest  were 
bought." 

This  was  paradise !  We  ran  late,  and  talked, 
talked,  talked — subject,  the  Mark  Twain  Club  of 
Ccrrigan  Castle,  Ireland. 

My  first  knowledge  of  that  Club  dates  away  back ; 
all  of  twenty  years,  I  should  say.  It  came  to  me  in 
the  form  of  a  courteous  letter,  written  on  the  note- 
paper  which  I  have  described,  and  signed  "By 
order  of  the  President;  C.  PEMBROKE,  Secretary." 
It  conveyed  the  fact  that  the  Club  had  been  created 
in  my  honor,  and  added  the  hope  that  this  token  of 
appreciation  of  my  work  would  meet  with  my 
approval. 

I  answered,  with  thanks;  and  did  what  I  could  to 
keep  my  gratification  from  over-exposure. 

It  was  then  that  the  long  correspondence  began. 
A  letter  came  back>  by  order  of  the  President, 
furnishing  me  the  names  of  the  members  —  thirty- 
two  in  number.  With  it  came  a  copy  of  the  Consti 
tution  and  By-Laws,  in  pamphlet  form,  and  artistic 
ally  printed.  The  initiation  fee  and  dues  were  in 
their  proper  place;  also,  schedule  of  meetings  — 
monthly — for  essays  upon  works  of  mine,  followed 
by  discussions;  Quarterly  for  business  and  a  supper- 


252  Following  the  Equator 

without  essays,  but  with  after-supper  speeches ;  also 
there  was  a  list  of  the  officers:  President,  Vice- 
President,  Secretary,  Treasurer,  etc.  The  letter  was 
brief,  but  it  was  pleasant  reading,  for  it  told  me 
about  the  strong  interest  which  the  membership 
took  in  their  new  venture,  etc.,  etc.  It  also  asked 
me  for  a  photograph  —  a  special  one.  I  went  down 
and  sat  for  it  and  sent  it  —  with  a  letter,  of  course. 

Presently  came  the  badge  of  the  Club,  and  very 
dainty  and  pretty  it  was;  and  very  artistic.  It  was 
a  frog  peeping  out  from  a  graceful  tangle  of  grass- 
sprays  and  rushes,  and  was  done  in  enamels  on  a 
gold  basis,  and  had  a  gold  pin  back  of  it.  After  I 
had  petted  it,  and  played  with  it,  and  caressed  it, 
and  enjoyed  it  a  couple  of  hours,  the  light  happened 
to  fall  upon  it  at  a  new  angle,  and  revealed  to  me  a 
cunning  new  detail ;  with  the  light  just  right,  certain 
delicate  shadings  of  the  grass-blades  and  rush-stems 
wove  themselves  into  a  monogram  —  mine  !  You 
can  see  that  that  jewel  was  a  work  of  art.  And 
when  you  come  to  consider  the  intrinsic  value  of  it, 
you  must  concede  that  it  is  not  every  literary  club 
that  could  afford  a  badge  like  that.  It  was  easily 
worth  $75,  in  the  opinion  of  Messrs.  Marcus  and 
Ward  of  New  York.  They  said  they  could  not 
duplicate  it  for  that  and  make  a  profit. 

By  this  time  the  Club  was  well  underway;  and 
from  that  time  forth  its  secretary  kept  my  off-hours 
well  supplied  with  business.  He  reported  the  Club's 
discussions  of  my  books  with  laborious  fullness,  and 


Following  the  Equator  253 

did  his  work  with  great  spirit  and  ability.  As  a  rule, 
he  synopsized;  but  when  a  speech  was  especially 
brilliant,  he  short-handed  it  and  gave  me  the  best 
passages  from  it,  written  out.  There  were  five 
speakers  whom  he  particularly  favored  in  that  way : 
Palmer,  Forbes,  Naylor,  Norris,  and  Calder.  Palmer 
and  Forbes  could  never  get  through  a  speech  with 
out  attacking  each  other,  and  each  in  his  own  way 
was  formidably  effective  —  Palmer  in  virile  and  elo 
quent  abuse,  Forbes  in  courtly  and  elegant  but 
scalding  satire.  I  could  always  tell  which  of  them 
was  talking  without  looking  for  his  name.  Naylor 
had  a  polished  style  and  a  happy  knack  at  felicitous 
metaphor;  Norris's  style  was  wholly  without  orna 
ment,  but  enviably  compact,  lucid,  and  strong.  But 
after  all,  Calder  was  the  gem.  He  never  spoke 
when  sober,  he  spoke  continuously  when  he  wasn't. 
And  certainly  they  were  the  drunkest  speeches  that 
a  man  ever  uttered.  They  were  full  of  good  things, 
but  so  incredibly  mixed  up  and  wandering  that  it 
made  one's  head  swim  to  fellow  him.  They  were 
not  intended  to  be  funny,  but  they  were, —  funny 
for  the  very  gravity  which  the  speaker  put  into  his 
flowing  miracles  of  incongruity.  In  the  course  of 
five  years  I  came  to  know  the  styles  of  the  five 
orators  as  well  as  I  knew  the  style  of  any  speaker  in 
my  own  club  at  home. 

These  reports  came  every  month.  They  were 
written  on  foolscap,  600  words  to  the  page,  and 
usually  about  twenty-five  pages  in  a  report  —  a  good 


254  Following  the  Equator 

15,000  words,  I  should  say, —  a  solid  week's  work. 
The  reports  were  absorbingly  entertaining,  long  as 
they  were ;  but,  unfortunately  for  me,  they  did  not 
come  alone.  They  were  always  accompanied  by  a 
lot  of  questions  about  passages  and  purposes  in  my 
books,  which  the  Club  wanted  answered ;  and  addi 
tionally  accompanied  every  quarter  by  the  Treas 
urer's  report,  and  the  Auditor's  report,  and  the 
Committee's  report,  and  the  President's  review,  and 
my  opinion  of  these  was  always  desired ;  also  sug 
gestions  for  the  good  of  the  Club,  if  any  occurred 
to  me. 

By  and  by  I  came  to  dread  those  things ;  and  this 
dread  grew  and  grew  and  grew ;  grew  until  I  got  to 
anticipating  them  with  a  cold  horror.  For  I  was  an 
indolent  man,  and  not  fond  of  letter-writing,  and 
whenever  these  things  came  I  had  to  put  everything 
by  and  sit  down  —  for  my  own  peace  of  mind  —  and 
dig  and  dig  until  I  got  something  out  of  my  head 
which  would  answer  for  a  reply.  I  get  along  fairly 
well  the  first  year;  but  for  the  succeeding  four  years 
the  Mark  Twain  Club  of  Corrigan  Castle  was  my 
curse,  my  nightmare,  the  grief  and  misery  of  my 
life.  And  I  got  so,  so  sick  of  sitting  for  photo 
graphs.  I  sat  every  year  for  five  years,  trying  to 
satisfy  that  insatiable  organization.  Then  at  last  I 
rose  in  revolt.  I  could  endure  my  oppressions  no 
longer.  I  pulled  my  fortitude  together  and  tore  off 
my  chains,  and  was  a  free  man  again,  and  happy. 
From  that  day  I  burned  the  secretary's  fat  envelopes 


Following  the  Equator  255 

the  moment  they  arrived,  and  by  and  by  they  ceased 
to  come. 

Well,  in  the  sociable  frankness  of  that  night  in 
Bendigo  I  brought  this  all  out  in  full  confession. 
Then  Mr.  Blank  came  out  in  the  same  frank  way, 
and  with  a  preliminary  word  of  gentle  apology  said 
that  he  was  the  Mark  Twain  Club,  and  the  only 
member  it  had  ever  had ! 

Why,  it  was  matter  for  anger,  but  I  didn't  feel 
any.  He  said  he  never  had  to  work  for  a  living, 
and  that  by  the  time  he  was  thirty  life  had  become  a 
bore  and  a  weariness  to  him.  He  had  no  interests 
left;  they  had  paled  and  perished,  one  by  one,  and 
left  him  desolate.  He  had  begun  to  think  of  suicide. 
Then  all  of  a  sudden  he  thought  of  that  happy  idea 
of  starting  an  imaginary  club,  and  went  straightway 
to  work  at  it,  with  enthusiasm  and  love.  He  was 
charmed  with  it;  it  gave  him  something  to  do.  It 
elaborated  itself  on  his  hands;  it  became  twenty 
times  more  complex  and  formidable  than  was  his 
first  rude  draft  of  it.  Every  new  addition  to  his 
original  plan  which  cropped  up  in  his  mind  gave 
him  a  fresh  interest  and  a  new  pleasure.  He  de 
signed  the  Club  badge  himself,  and  worked  over  it, 
altering  and  improving  it,  a  number  of  days  and 
nights;  then  sent  to  London  and  had  it  made.  It 
was  the  only  one  that  was  made.  It  was  made  for 
me;  the  "  rest  of  the  Club  "  went  without. 

He  invented  the  thirty-two  members  and  their 
names.  He  invented  the  five  favorite  speakers  and 


CHAPTER    XXVI. 

There  are  people  who  can  do  all  fine  and  heroic  things  but  one:  keep  from 
telling  their  happinesses  to  the  unhappy. 

— PudcTnhead  Wilson' 's  New  Calendar. 

7YFTER  visits  to  Maryborough  and  some  other 
'»  Australian  towns,  we  presently  took  passage 
for  New  Zealand.  If  it  would  not  look  too  much 
like  showing  off,  I  would  tell  the  reader  where  New 
Zealand  is ;  for  he  is  as  I  was :  he  thinks  he  knows. 
And  he  thinks  he  knows  where  Herzegovina  is; 
and  how  to  pronounce  pariah  ;  and  how  to  use  the 
word  unique  without  exposing  himself  to  the  derision 
of  the  dictionary.  But  in  truth,  he  knows  none  of 
these  things.  There  are  but  four  or  five  people  in 
the  world  who  possess  this  knowledge,  and  these 
make  their  living  out  of  it.  They  travel  from  place 
to  place,  visiting  literary  assemblages,  geographical 
societies,  and  seats  of  learning,  and  springing  sud 
den  bets  that  these  people  do  not  know  these  things. 
Since  all  people  think  they  know  them,  they  are  an 
easy  prey  to  these  adventurers.  Or  rather  they 
were  an  easy  prey  until  the  law  interfered  three 
months  ago,  and  a  New  York  court  decided  that  this 
kind  of  gambling  is  illegal,  "  because  it  traverses 

(253) 


Following  the  Equator  259 

Article  IV,  Section  9,  of  the  Constitution  of  the 
United  States,  which  forbids  betting  on  a  sure 
thing."  This  decision  was  rendered  by  the  full 
Bench  of  the  New  York  Supreme  Court,  after  a  test 
sprung  upon  the  court  by  counsel  for  the  prosecu 
tion,  which  showed  that  none  of  the  nine  Judges 
was  able  to  answer  any  of  the  four  questions. 

All  people  think  that  New  Zealand  is  close  to 
Australia  or  Asia,  or  somewhere,  and  that  you  cross 
to  it  on  a  bridge.  But  that  is  not  so.  It  is  not 
close  to  anything,  but  lies  by  itself,  out  in  the 
water.  It  is  nearest  to  Australia,  but  still  not  near. 
The  gap  between  is  very  wide.  It  will  be  a  surprise 
to  the  reader,  as  it  was  to  me,  to  learn  that  the  dis 
tance  from  Australia  to  New  Zealand  is  really  twelve 
or  thirteen  hundred  miles,  and  that  there  is  no 
bridge.  I  learned  this  from  Professor  X.,  of  Yale 
University,  whom  I  met  in  the  steamer  on  the  great 
lakes  when  I  was  crossing  the  continent  to  sail  across 
the  Pacific.  I  asked  him  about  New  Zealand,  in 
order  to  make  conversation.  I  supposed  he  would 
generalize  a  little  without  compromising  himself, 
and  then  turn  the  subject  to  something  he  was  ac 
quainted  with,  and  my  object  wrould  then  be  at 
tained  :  the  ice  would  be  broken,  and  we  could  go 
smoothly  on,  and  get  acquainted,  and  have  a  pleas 
ant  time.  But,  to  my  surprise,  he  was  not  only  not 
embarrassed  by  my  question,  but  seemed  to  welcome 
it,  and  to  take  a  distinct  interest  in  it.  He  began 
to  talk — fluently,  confidently,  comfortably:  and  as 


260  Following  the  Equator 

he  talked,  my  admiration  grew  and  grew;  for  as  the 
subject  developed  under  his  hands,  I  saw  that  he 
not  only  knew  where  New  Zealand  was,  but  that  he 
was  minutely  familiar  with  every  detail  of  its  history, 
politic::,  religions,  and  commerce,  its  fauna,  flora, 
geology,  products,  and  climatic  peculiarities.  When 
he  was  done,  I  was  lost  in  wonder  and  admiration, 
and  said  to  myself,  he  knows  everything;  in  the 
domain  of  human  knowledge  he  is  king. 

I  wanted  to  see  him  do  more  miracles;  and  so, 
just  for  the  pleasure  of  hearing  him  answer,  I  asked 
him  about  Herzegovina,  and  pariah,  and  unique. 
But  he  began  to  generalize  then,  and  show  distress. 
I  saw  that  with  New  Zealand  gone,  he  was  a  Samson 
shorn  of  his  locks;  he  was  as  other  men.  This  was 
a  curious  and  interesting  mystery,  and  I  was  frank 
with  him,  and  asked  him  to  explain  it. 

He  tried  to  avoid  it  at  first;  but  then  laughed  and 
said  that,  after  all,  the  matter  was  not  worth  conceal 
ment,  so  he  would  let  me  into  the  secret.  In  sub 
stance,  this  is  his  story: 

"Last  autumn  I  was  at  work  one  morning  at  home,  when  a  card 
came  up  —  the  card  of  a  stranger.  Under  the  name  was  printed  a  line 
which  showed  that  this  visitor  was  Professor  of  Theological  Engineering 
in  Wellington  University,  New  Zealand.  I  was  troubled  —  troubled,  I 
mean,  by  the  shortness  of  the  notice.  College  etiquette  required  that 
he  be  at  once  invited  to  dinner  by  some  member  of  the  Faculty  —  in 
vited  to  dine  on  that  day  —  not  put  off  till  a  subsequent  day.  I  did  not 
quite  know  what  to  do.  College  etiquette  requires,  in  the  case  of  a 
foreign  guest,  that  the  dinner-talk  shall  begin  with  complimentary  refer 
ences  to  his  country,  its  great  men,  its  services  to  civilization,  its  seats 
of  learning,  and  things  like  that;  and  of  course  the  host  is  responsible, 


Following  the  Equator  261 

and  must  either  begin  this  talk  himself  or  see  that  it  is  done  by  some 
one  else.  I  was  in  great  difficulty;  and  the  more  I  searched  my 
memory,  the  more  my  trouble  grew.  I  found  that  I  knew  nothing  about 
New  Zealand.  I  thought  I  knew  where  it  was,  and  that  was  all.  I  had 
an  impression  that  it  was  close  to  Australia,  or  Asia,  or  somewhere,  and 
that  one  went  over  to  it  on  a  bridge.  This  might  turn  out  to  be  incor 
rect;  and  even  if  correct,  it  would  not  furnish  matter  enough  for  the 
purpose  at  the  dinner,  and  I  should  expose  my  College  to  shame  before 
my  guest;  he  would  see  that  I,  a  member  of  the  Faculty  of  the  first 
University  in  America,  was  wholly  ignorant  of  his  country,  and  he 
would  go  away  and  tell  this,  and  laugh  at  it.  The  thought  of  it  made 
my  face  burn. 

"  I  sent  for  my  wife  and  told  her  how  I  was  situated,  and  asked  for  her 
help,  and  she  thought  of  a  thing  which  I  might  have  thought  of  myself, 
if  I  had  not  been  excited  and  worried.  She  said  she  would. go  and  tell 
the  visitor  that  I  was  out,  but  would  be  in  in  a  few  minutes;  and  she 
would  talk  and  keep  him  busy  while  I  got  out  the  back  way  and  hurried 
over  and  make  Professor  Lawson  give  the  dinner.  For  Lawson  knew 
everything  and  could  meet  the  guest  in  a  creditable  way,  and  save  the 
reputation  of  the  University.  I  ran  to  Lawson,  but  was  disappointed. 
He  did  not  knew  anything  about  New  Zealand.  He  said  that,  as  far  as 
his  recollection  went  it  was  close  to  Australia,  or  Asia,  or  somewhere, 
and  you  go  over  to  it  on  a  bridge;  but  that  was  all  he  knew.  It  was  too 
bad.  Lawson  was  a  perfect  encyclopedia  of  abstruse  learning;  but  now 
in  this  hour  of  our  need,  it  turned  out  that  he  did  not  know  any  useful 
thing. 

"  We  consulted.  He  saw  that  the  reputation  of  the  University  was 
in  very  real  peril,  and  he  walked  the  floor  in  anxiety,  talking,  and  trying 
to  think  out  some  way  to  meet  the  difficulty.  Presently,  he  decided  that 
we  must  try  the  rest  of  the  Faculty  —  some  of  them  might  know  about 
New  Zealand.  So  we  went  to  the  telephone  and  called  up  the  professor 
of  astronomy  and  asked  him,  and  he  said  that  all  he  knew  was,  that  it  was 
close  to  Australia,  or  Asia,  or  somewhere,  and  you  went  over  to  it  on  — • 

"We  shut  him  off  and  called  up  the  professor  of  biology,  and  he 
said  that  all  he  knew  was  that  it  was  close  to  Aus  — 

*'  We  shut  him  off,  and  sat  down,  worried  and  disheartened,  to  see 
if  we  could  think  up  some  other  scheme.  We  shortly  hit  upon  one 
which  promised  well,  and  this  one  we  adopted,  and  set  its  machinery 
going  at  once.  It  was  this.  Lawson  must  give  the  dinner.  The 


262  Following  the  Equator 

Faculty  must  be  notified  by  telephone  to  prepare.  We  must  all  get  to 
work  diligently,  and  at  the  end  of  eight  hours  and  a  half  we  must  come 
to  dinner  acquainted  with  New  Zealand;  at  least  well  enough  informed 
to  appear  without  discredit  before  this  native.  To  seem  properly  in 
telligent  we  should  have  to  know  about  New  Zealand's  population,  and 
politics,  and  form  of  government,  and  commerce,  and  taxes,  and  pro 
ducts,  and  ancient  history,  and  modern  history,  and  varieties  of  religion, 
and  nature  of  the  laws,  and  their  codification,  and  amount  of  revenue, 
and  whence  drawn,  and  methods  of  collection,  and  percentage  of  loss, 
and  character  of  climate,  and  —  well,  a  lot  of  things  like  that;  we  must 
suck  the  maps  and  cyclopedias  dry.  And  while  we  posted  up  in  this  way, 
the  Faculty's  wives  must  flock  over,  one  after  the  other,  in  a  studiedly 
casual  way,  and  help  my  wife  keep  the  New  Zealander  quiet,  and  not 
let  him  get  out  and  come  interfering  with  our  studies.  The  scheme 
worked  admirably;  but  it  stopped  business,  stopped  it  entirely. 

"It  is  in  the  official  log-book  of  Yale,  to  be  read  and  wondered  at 
by  future  generations  —  the  account  of  the  Great  Blank  Day  —  the 
memorable  Blank  Day  —  the  day  wherein  the  wheels  of  culture  were 
stopped,  a  Sunday  silence  prevailed  all  about,  and  the  whole  University 
stood  still  while  the  Faculty  read-up  and  qualified  itself  to  sit  at  meat, 
without  shame,  in  the  presence  of  the  Professor  of  Theological  En 
gineering  from  New  Zealand. 

"  When  we  assembled  at  the  dinner  we  were  miserably  tired  and 
worn  —  but  we  were  posted.  Yes,  it  is  fair  to  claim  that.  In  fact,  eru 
dition  is  a  pale  name  for  it.  New  Zealand  was  the  only  subject  ;  and 
it  was  just  beautiful  to  hear  us  ripple  it  out.  And  with  such  an  air  of 
unembarrassed  ease,  and  unostentatious  familiarity  with  detail,  and 
trained  and  seasoned  mastery  of  the  subject  —  and  oh,  the  grace  and 
fluency  of  it ! 

"  Well,  finally  somebody  happened  to  notice  that  the  guest  was 
looking  dazed,  and  wasn't  saying  anything.  So  they  stirred  him  up,  of 
course.  Then  that  man  came  out  with  a  good,  honest,  eloquent  com 
pliment  that  made  the  Faculty  blush.  He  said  he  was  not  worthy  to 
sit  in  the  company  of  men  like  these  ;  that  he  had  been  silent  from  ad 
miration  ;  that  he  had  been  silent  from  another  cause  also  —  silent  from 
shame  —  silent  from  ignorance!  '  For,'  said  he,  *  I,  who  have  lived 
eighteen  years  in  New  Zealand  and  have  served  five  in  a  professorship, 
and  ought  to  know  much  about  that  country,  perceive,  now,  that  I 
know  almost  nothing  about  it.  I  say  it  with  shame,  that  I  have  learned 


Following  the  Equator  263 

fifty  times,  yes,  a  hundred  times  more  about  New  Zealand  in  these  two 
hours  at  this  table  than  I  ever  knew  before  in  all  the  eighteen  years  put 
together.  I  was  silent  because  I  could  not  help  myself.  What  I  knew 
about  taxes,  and  policies,  and  laws,  and  revenue,  and  products,  and 
history,  and  all  that  multitude  of  things,  was  but  general,  and  ordinary, 
and  vague  —  unscientific,  in  a  word  —  and  it  would  have  been  insanity 
to  expose  it  here  to  the  searching  glare  of  your  amazingly  accurate  and 
all-comprehensive  knowledge  of  those  matters,  gentlemen.  I  beg  you 
to  let  me  sit  silent  —  as  becomes  me.  But  do  not  change  the  subject ; 
I  can  at  least  follow  you,  in  this  one;  whereas,  if  you  change  to  one 
which  shall  call  out  the  full  strength  of  your  mighty  erudition,  I  shall 
be  as  one  lost.  If  you  know  all  this  about  a  remote  little  inconsequent 
patch  like  New  Zealand,  ah,  what  wouldn't  you  know  about  any  other 
subject!" 


CHAPTER   XXVII. 

Man  is  the  Only  Animal  that  Blushes.    Or  needs  to. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

The  universal  brotherhood  of  man  is  our  most  precious  possession,  what 
there  is  of  it.  —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

FROM  DIARY  : 

NOVEMBER  I  —  noon.  A  fine  day,  a  brilliant 
sun.  Warm  in  the  sun,  cold  in  the  shade  — 
an  icy  breeze  blowing  out  of  the  south.  A  solemn 
long  swell  rolling  up  northward.  It  comes  from  the 
South  Pole,  with  nothing  in  the  way  to  obstruct  its 
march  and  tone  its  energy  down.  I  have  read  some 
where  that  an  acute  observer  among  the  early  ex 
plorers —  Cook?  or  Tasman?  —  accepted  this  majes 
tic  swell  as  trustworthy  circumstantial  evidence  that 
no  important  land  lay  to  the  southward,  and  so  did 
not  waste  time  on  a  useless  quest  in  that  direction, 
but  changed  his  course  and  went  searching  else 
where. 

Afternoon.  Passing  between  Tasmania  (formerly 
Van  Diemen's  Land)  and  neighboring  islands  — 
islands  whence  the  poor  exiled  Tasmanian  savages 
used  to  gaze  at  their  lost  homeland  and  cry;  and 
die  of  broken  hearts.  How  glad  I  am  that  all  these 
native  races  are  dead  and  gone,  cr  nearly  so.  The 

(2*4) 


Following  the  Equator  265 

work  was  mercifully  swift  and  horrible  in  some 
portions  of  Australia.  As  far  as  Tasmania  is  con 
cerned,  the  extermination  was  complete:  not  a 
native  is  left.  It  was  a  strife  of  years,  and  decades 
of  years.  The  Whites  and  the  Blacks  hunted  each 
other,  ambushed  each  other,  butchered  each  other. 
The  Blacks  were  not  numerous.  But  they  were 
wary,  alert,  cunning,  and  they  knew  their  country 
well.  They  lasted  a  long  time,  few  as  they  were, 
and  inflicted  much  slaughter  upon  the  Whites. 

The  Government  wanted  to  save  the  Blacks  from 
ultimate  extermination,  if  possible.  One  of  its 
schemes  was  to  capture  them  and  coop  them  up, 
on  a  neighboring  island,  under  guard.  Bodies  of 
Whites  volunteered  for  the  hunt,  for  the  pay  was 
good  —  ^5  for  each  Black  captured  and  delivered ; 
but  the  success  achieved  was  not  very  satisfactory. 
The  Black  was  naked,  and  his  body  was  greased.  It 
was  hard  to  get  a  grip  on  him  that  would  hold.  The 
Whites  moved  about  in  armed  bodies,  and  surprised 
little  families  of  natives,  and  did  make  captures;  but 
it  was  suspected  that  In  these  surprises  half  a  dozen 
natives  were  killed  to  one  caught  —  and  that  was  not 
what  the  government  desired. 

Another  scheme  was  to  drive  the  natives  into  a 
corner  of  the  island  and  fence  them  in  by  a  cordon 
of  men  placed  in  line  across  the  country;  but  the 
natives  managed  to  slip  through,  constantly,  and 
continue  their  murders  and  arsons. 

The  Governor  warned  these  unlettered  savages  by 


CHAPTER   XXVII. 

Man  is  the  Only  Animal  that  Blushes.    Or  needs  to. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

The  universal  brotherhood  of  man  is  our  most  precious  possession,  what 
there  is  of  it.  —  Pudd'nhead  Wilsorts  New  Calendar. 

FROM  DIARY: 

NOVEMBER  i  — noon.  A  fine  day,  a  brilliant 
sun.  Warm  in  the  sun,  cold  in  the  shade  — 
an  icy  breeze  blowing  out  of  the  south.  A  solemn 
long  swell  rolling  up  northward.  It  comes  from  the 
South  Pole,  with  nothing  in  the  way  to  obstruct  its 
march  and  tone  its  energy  down.  I  have  read  some 
where  that  an  acute  observer  among  the  early  ex 
plorers —  Cook?  or  Tasman?  —  accepted  this  majes 
tic  swell  as  trustworthy  circumstantial  evidence  that 
no  important  land  lay  to  the  southward,  and  so  did 
not  waste  time  on  a  useless  quest  in  that  direction, 
but  changed  his  course  and  went  searching  else 
where. 

Afternoon.  Passing  between  Tasmania  (formerly 
Van  Diemen's  Land)  and  neighboring  islands  — 
islands  whence  the  poor  exiled  Tasmanian  savages 
used  to  gaze  at  their  lost  homeland  and  cry;  and 
die  of  broken  hearts.  How  glad  I  am  that  all  these 
native  races  are  dead  and  gone,  or  nearly  so.  The 


Following  the  Equator  265 

work  was  mercifully  swift  and  horrible  in  some 
portions  of  Australia.  As  far  as  Tasmania  is  con 
cerned,  the  extermination  was  complete:  not  a 
native  is  left.  It  was  a  strife  of  years,  and  decades 
of  years.  The  Whites  and  the  Blacks  hunted  each 
other,  ambushed  each  other,  butchered  each  other. 
The  Blacks  were  not  numerous.  But  they  were 
wary,  alert,  cunning,  and  they  knew  their  country 
well.  They  lasted  a  long  time,  few  as  they  were, 
and  inflicted  much  slaughter  upon  the  Whites. 

The  Government  wanted  to  save  the  Blacks  from 
ultimate  extermination,  if  possible.  One  of  its 
schemes  was  to  capture  them  and  coop  them  up, 
on  a  neighboring  island,  under  guard.  Bodies  of 
Whites  volunteered  for  the  hunt,  for  the  pay  was 
good  —  £$  for  each  Black  captured  and  delivered  ; 
but  the  success  achieved  was  not  very  satisfactory. 
The  Black  was  naked,  and  his  body  was  greased.  It 
was  hard  to  get  a  grip  on  him  that  would  hold.  The 
Whites  moved  about  in  armed  bodies,  and  surprised 
little  families  of  natives,  and  did  make  captures;  but 
it  was  suspected  that  in  these  surprises  half  a  dozen 
natives  were  killed  to  one  caught  —  and  that  was  not 
what  the  government  desired. 

Another  scheme  was  to  drive  the  natives  into  a 
corner  of  the  island  and  fence  them  in  by  a  cordon 
of  men  placed  in  line  across  the  country;  but  the 
natives  managed  to  slip  through,  constantly,  and 
continue  their  murders  and  arsons. 

The  Governor  warned  these  unlettered  savages  by 


266  Following  the  Equator 

printed  proclamation  that  they  must  stay  in  the 
desolate  region  officially  appointed  for  them !  The 
proclamation  was  a  dead  letter;  the  savages  could 
not  read  it.  Afterward  a  /^/^-proclamation  was 
issued.  It  was  painted  upon  boards,  and  these 
were  nailed  to  trees  in  the  forest.  Herewith  is  a 
photographic  reproduction  of  this  fashion-plate. 
Substantially  it  means : 

1.  The  Governor  wishes  the  Whites  and  the  Blacks  to  love  each 
other ; 

2.  He  loves  his  black  subjects  ; 

3.  Blacks  who  kill  Whites  will  be  hanged  ; 

4.  Whites  who  kill  Blacks  will  be  hanged.' 

Upon  its  several  schemes  the  Government  spent 
,£30,000  and  employed  the  labors  and  ingenuities 
of  several  thousand  Whites  for  a  long  time  —  with 
failure  as  a  result.  Then,  at  last,  a  quarter  of  a 
century  after  the  beginning  of  the  troubles  between 
the  two  races,  the  right  man  was  found .  No,  he 
found  himself.  This  was  George  Augustus  Robin 
son,  called  in  history  "The  Conciliator."  He  was 
not  educated,  and  not  conspicuous  in  any  way.  He 
was  a  working  bricklayer,  in  Hobart  Town.  But  he 
must  have  been  an  amazing  personality;  a  man 
worth  traveling  far  to  see.  It  may  be  his  counter 
part  appears  in  history,  but  J  do  not  know  where  to 
look  for  it. 

He  set  himself  this  incredible  task :  to  go  out  into 
the  wilderness,  the  jungle,  and  the  mountain-retreats 
where  the  hunted  and  implacable  savages  were  hid- 


''Why—Massa  Gubernor "— said  Black  Jack— "You  Proflamation 

gamiaon,  bow  blackfellow  read  him  P— eh!     He  aao  re?d  Jym 

>ofc,'*.  "Bead  that  then,"  said  the  Governor,  ppinting  to  a  picture.. 


THE    GOVERNOR  S    PROCLAMATION 


OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY 

OF 


Following  the  Equator  267 

den,  and  appear  among  them  unarmed,  speak  the 
language  of  love  and  of  kindness  to  them,  and  per 
suade  them  to  forsake  their  homes  and  the  wild  free 
life  that  was  so  dear  to  them,  and  go  with  him  and 
surrender  to  the  hated  Whites  and  live  under  their 
watch  and  ward,  and  upon  their  charity  the  rest  of 
their  lives !  On  its  face  it  was  the  dream  of  a 
madman. 

In  the  beginning,  his  moral-suasion  project  was 
sarcastically  dubbed  the  sugar-plum  speculation.  If 
the  scheme  was  striking,  and  new  to  the  world's 
experience,  the  situation  was  not  less  so.  It  was 
this.  The  White  population  numbered  40,000  in 
1831;  the  Black  population  numbered  three  hun 
dred.  Not  300  warriors,  but  300  men,  women, 
and  children.  The  Whites  were  armed  with  guns, 
the  Blacks  with  clubs  and  spears.  The  Whites 
had  fought  the  Blacks  for  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
and  had  tried  every  thinkable  way  to  capture,  kill, 
or  subdue  them  ;  and  could  not  do  it.  If  white  men 
of  any  race  could  have  done  it,  these  would  have 
accomplished  it.  But  every  scheme  had  failed,  the 
splendid  300,  the  matchless  300  were  unconquered, 
and  manifestly  unconquerable.  They  would  not 
yield,  they  would  listen  to  no  terms,  they  would 
fight  to  the  bitter  end.  Yet  they  had  no  poet  to 
keep  up  their  heart,  and  sing  the  marvel  of  their 
magnificent  patriotism. 

At  the  end  of  five-and-twenty  years  of  hard  fight 
ing,  the  surviving  300  naked  patriots  were  still  de- 


268  Following  the  Equator 

fiant,  still  persistent,  still  efficacious  with  their  rude 
weapons,  and  the  governor  and  the  40,000  knew 
not  which  way  to  turn,  nor  what  to  do. 

Then  the  Bricklayer  —  that  wonderful  man  —  pro 
posed  to  go  out  into  the  wilderness,  with  no  weapon 
but  his  tongue,  and  no  protection  but  his  honest 
eye  and  his  humane  heart,  and  track  those  em 
bittered  savages  to  their  lairs  in  the  gloomy  forests 
and  among  the  mountain  snows.  Naturally,  he  was 
considered  a  crank.  But  he  wras  not  quite  that.  In 
fact,  he  was  a  good  way  short  of  that.  He  was 
building  upon  his  long  and  intimate  knowledge  of 
the  native  character.  The  deriders  of  his  project, 
were  right  —  from  their  standpoint  —  for  they  be 
lieved  the  natives  to  be  mere  wild  beasts ;  and 
Robinson  was  right,  from  his  standpoint  —  for  he 
believed  the  natives  to  be  human  beings.  The  truth 
did  really  lie  between  the  two.  The  event  proved 
that  Robinson's  judgment  was  soundest;  but  about 
once  a  month  for  four  years  the  event  came  near  to 
giving  the  verdict  to  the  deriders,  for  about  that  fre 
quently  Robinson  barely  escaped  falling  under  the 
native  spears. 

But  history  shows  that  he  had  a  thinking  head, 
and  was  not  a  mere  wild  sentimentalist.  For  in 
stance,  he  wanted  the  war  parties  called  in  before 
he  started  unarmed  upon  his  mission  of  peace. 
He  wanted  the  best  chance  of  success  —  not  a  half- 
chance.  And  he  was  very  willing  to  have  help; 
and  so,  high  rewards  were  advertised,  for  any  who 


Following  the  Equatoi  269 

would  go  unarmed  with  him.  This  opportunity  was 
declined.  Robinson  persuaded  some  tamed  natives 
of  both  sexes  to  go  with  him  —  a  strong  evidence  of 
his  persuasive  powers,  for  those  natives  well  knew 
that  their  destruction  would  be  almost  certain.  As 
it  turned  out,  they  had  to  face  death  over  and  over 
again. 

Robinson  and  his  little  party  had  a  difficult  under 
taking  upon  their  hands.  They  could  not  ride  off, 
horseback,  comfortably  into  the  woods  and  call 
Leonidas  and  his  300  together  for  a  talk  and  a  treaty 
the  following  day;  for  the  wild  men  were  not  in  a 
body;  they  were  scattered,  immense  distances  apart, 
over  regions  so  desolate  that  even  the  birds  could 
not  make  a  living  with  the  chances  offered  —  scat 
tered  in  groups  of  twenty,  a  dozen,  half  a  dozen, 
even  in  groups  of  three.  And  the  mission  must  go 
on  foot.  Mr.  Bonwick  furnishes  a  description  of 
those  horrible  regions,  whereby  it  will  be  seen  that 
even  fugitive  gangs  of  the  hardiest  and  choicest 
human  devils  the  world  has  seen  —  the  convicts  set 
apart  to  people  the  *'  Hell  of  Macquarrie  Harbor 
Station" — were  never  able,  but  once,  to  survive 
the  horrors  of  a  march  through  them,  but,  starving 
and  struggling,  and  fainting  and  failing,  ate  each 
other,  and  died : 

"  Onward,  still  onward,  was  the  order  of  the  indomitable  Robinson. 
No  one  ignorant  of  the  western  country  of  Tasmania  can  form  a  correct 
idea  of  the  traveling  difficulties.  While  I  was  resident  in  Hobart  Town, 
the  Governor,  Sir  John  Franklin,  and  his  lady,  undertook  the  western 
journey  to  Macquarrie  Harbor,  and  suffered  terribly.  One  man  who 
18* 


270  Following  the  Equator 

assisted  to  carry  her  ladyship  through  the  swamps,  gave  me  his  bitter 
experience  of  its  miseries.  Several  were  disabled  for  life.  No  wonder 
that  but  one  party,  escaping  from  Macquarrie  Harbor  convict  settlement, 
arrived  at  the  civilized  region  in  safety.  Men  perished  in  the  scrub, 
were  lost  in  snow,  or  were  devoured  by  their  companions.  This  was 
the  territory  traversed  by  Mr,  Robinson  and  his  Black  guides.  All 
honor  to  his  intrepidity,  and  their  wonderful  fidelity  !  When  they  had, 
in  the  depth  of  winter,  to  cross  deep  and  rapid  rivers,  pass  among 
mountains  six  thousand  feet  high,  pierce  dangerous  thickets,  and  find 
food  in  a  countrv  forsaken  even  by  birds,  we  can  realize  their  hard 
ships. 

"After  a  frightful  journey  by  Cradle  Mountain,  and  over  the  lofty 
plateau  of  Middlesex  Plains,  the  travelers  experienced  unwonted  misery, 
and  the  circumstances  called  forth  the  best  qualities  of  the  noble  little 
band.  Mr.  Robinson  wrote  afterwards  to  Mr.  Secretary  Burnett  some 
details  of  this  passage  of  horrors.  In  that  letter,  of  October  2,  1834, 
he  states  that  his  Natives  were  very  reluctant  to  go  over  the  dreadful 
mountain  passes;  that  '  for  seven  successive  days  we  continued  travel 
ing  over  one  solid  body  of  snow;'  that  'the  snows  were  of  incredible 
depth;'  that  'the  Natives  were  frequently  up  to  their  middle  in  snow.' 
But  still  the  ill-clad,  ill-fed,  diseased,  and  wayworn'  men  and  women 
were  sustained  by  the  cheerful  voice  of  their  unconquerable  friend,  and 
responded  most  nobly  to  his  call." 

Mr.  Bonwick  says  that  Robinson's  friendly  capture 
of  the  Big  River  tribe  —  remember,  it  was  a  whole 
tribe — "  was  by  far  the  grandest  feature  of  the  war, 
and  the  crowning  glory  of  his  efforts."  The  word 
4 'war  "was  not  well  chosen,  and  is  misleading. 
There  was  war  still,  but  only  the  Blacks  were  con 
ducting  it  —  the  Whites  were  holding  off  until  Rob 
inson  could  give  his  scheme  a  fair  trial.  I  think 
that  we  are  to  understand  that  the  friendly  capture 
of  that  tribe  was  by  far  the  most  important  thing, 
the  highest  in  value,  that  happened  during  the  whole 
thirty  years  of  truceless  hostilities;  that  it  was  a 


Following  the  Equator  271 

decisive  thing,  a  peaceful  Waterloo,  the  surrender  of 
the  native  Napoleon  and  his  dreaded  forces,  the 
happy  ending  of  the  long  strife.  For  "  that  tribe 
was  the  terror  of  the  colony,"  its  chief  "  the  Black 
Douglas  of  Bush  households." 

Robinson  knew  that  these  formidable  people  were 
lurking  somewhere,  in  some  remote  corner  of  the 
hideous  regions  just  described,  and  he  and  his  un 
armed  little  party  started  on  a  tedious  and  perilous 
hunt  for  them.  At  last,  "  there,  under  the  shadows 
of  the  Frenchman's  Cap,  whose  grim  cone  rose  five 
thousand  feet  in  the  uninhabited  westward  inte 
rior,"  they  were  found.  It  was  a  serious  moment. 
Robinson  himself  believed,  for  once,  that  his  mis 
sion,  successful  until  now,  was  to  end  here  in  failure, 
and  that  his  own  death-hour  had  struck. 

The  redoubtable  chief  stood  in  menacing  attitude, 
with  his  eighteen-foot  spear  poised ;  his  warriors 
stood  massed  at  his  back,  armed  for  battle,  their 
faces  eloquent  with  their  long-cherished  loathing  for 
white  men.  "  They  rattled  their  spears  and  shouted 
their  war-cry."  Their  women  were  back  of  them, 
laden  with  supplies  of  weapons,  and  keeping  their 
150  eager  dogs  quiet  until  the  chief  should  give  the 
signal  to  fall  on, 

"I  think  we  shall  soon  be  in  the  resurrection," 
whispered  a  member  of  Robinson's  little  party. 

"I  think  we  shall,"  answered  Robinson;  then 
plucked  up  heart  and  began  his  persuasions  —  in  the 
tribe's  own  dialect,  which  surprised  and  pleased  the 


272  Following  the  Equator 

chief.  Presently  there  was  an  interruption  by  the 
chief: 

"Who  are  you?" 

"We  are  gentlemen.' 

"  Where  are  your  guns?" 

"  We  have  none.'* 

The  warrior  was  astonished. 

"  Where  your  little  guns?"  (pistols.) 

4 'We  have  none." 

A  few  minutes  passed  —  in  by-play  —  suspense  — 
discussion  among  the  tribesmen  —  Robinson's  tamed 
squaws  ventured  to  cross  the  line  and  begin  per 
suasions  upon  the  wild  squaws.  Then  the  chief 
stepped  back  "  to  confer  with  the  old  women  —  the 
real  arbiters  of  savage  war."  Mr.  Bonwick  con 
tinues  : 

"  As  the  fallen  gladiator  in  the  arena  looks  for  the  signal  of  life  or 
death  from  the  president  of  the  amphitheater,  so  waited  our  friends  in 
anxious  suspense  while  the  conference  continued.  In  a  few  minutes, 
before  a  word  was  uttered,  the  women  of  the  tribe  threw  up  their  arms 
three  times.  This  was  the  inviolable  sign  of  peace !  Down  fell  the 
spears.  Forward,  with  a  heavy  sigh  of  relief,  and  upward  glance  of 
gratitude,  came  the  friends  of  peace.  The  impulsive  natives  rushed 
forth  with  tears  and  cries,  as  each  saw  in  the  other's  ranks  a  loved  one 
of  the  past.  ,  .  . 

"  It  was  a  jubilee  of  joy.  A  festival  followed.  And,  while  tears 
flowed  at  the  recital  of  woe,  a  corrobory  of  pleasant  laughter  closed  the 
eventful  day." 

In  four  years,  without  the  spilling  of  a  drop  of 
blood,  Robinson  brought  them  all  m,  willing  captives, 
and  delivered  them  to  the  white  governor,  and 
ended  the  war  which  powder  and  bullets,  and  thou- 


Following  the  Equator  273 

sands  of  men  to  use  them,  had  prosecuted  without 
result  since  1804.' 

Marsyas  charming  the  wild  beasts  with  his  music 
—  that  is  fable ;  but  the  miracle  wrought  by  Robin 
son  is  fact.  It  is  history — and  authentic;  and 
surely,  there  is  nothing  greater,  nothing  more  rev 
erence-compelling  in  the  history  of  any  country, 
ancient  or  modern. 

And  in  memory  of  the  greatest  man  Australasia 
ever  developed  or  ever  will  develop,  there  is  a  stately 
monument  to  George  Augustus  Robinson,  the  Con 
ciliator,  in  —  no,  it  is  to  another  man,  I  forget  his 
name. 

However,  Robinson's  own  generation  honored 
him,  and  in  manifesting  it  honored  themselves. 
The  Government  gave  him  a  money  reward  and  a 
thousand  acres  of  land ;  and  the  people  held  mass- 
meetings  and  praised  him  and  emphasized  their  praise 
with  a  large  subscription  of  money. 

A  good  dramatic  situation;  but  the  curtain  fell  on 
another : 

"  When  this  desperate  tribe  was  thus  captured,  there  was  much  sur 
prise  to  find  that  the  ,£30,000  of  a  little  earlier  day  had  been  spent,  and 
the  whole  population  of  the  colony  placed  under  arms,  in  contention 
with  an  opposing  force  of  sixteen  men  with  "wooden  spears!  Yet  such 
was  the  fact.  The  celebrated  Big  River  tribe,  that  had  been  raised  by 
European  fears  to  a  host,  consisted  of  sixteen  men,  nine  women,  and 
one  child.  With  a  knowledge  of  the  mischief  done  by  these  few,  their 
wonderful  marches  and  their  widespread  aggressions,  their  enemies  can 
not  deny  to  them  the  attributes  of  courage  and  military  tact.  A  Wallace 
might  harass  a  large  army  with  a  small  and  determined  band;  but  the 
contending  parties  were  at  least  equal  in  arms  and  civilization.  The 
18. 


274  Following  the  Equator 

Zulus  who  fought  us  in  Africa,  the  Maoris  in  New  Zealand,  the  Arabs 
in  the  Soudan,  were  far  better  provided  with  weapons,  more  advanced 
in  the  science  of  war,  and  considerably  more  numerous,  than  the  naked 
Tasmanians.  Governor  Arthur  rightly  termed  them  a  noble  race" 

These  were  indeed  wonderful  people,  the  natives. 
They  ought  not  to  have  been  wasted.  They  should 
have  been  crossed  with  the  Whites.  It  would 
have  improved  the  Whites  and  done  the  Natives 
no  harm. 

But  the  Natives  were  wasted,  poor  heroic  wild 
creatures.  They  were  gathered  together  in  little 
settlements  on  neighboring  islands,  and  paternally 
cared  for  by  the  government,  and  instructed  in  re 
ligion,  and  deprived  of  tobacco,  because  the  sup 
erintendent  of  the  Sunday-school  was  not  a  smoker, 
and  so  considered  smoking  immoral. 

The  Natives  were  not  used  to  clothes,  and  houses, 
and  regular  hours,  and  church,  and  school,  and 
Sunday-school,  and  work,  and  the  other  misplaced 
persecutions  of  civilization,  and  they  pined  for  their 
lost  home  and  their  wild,  free  life.  Too  late  they 
repented  that  they  had  traded  that  heaven  for  this 
hell.  They  sat  homesick  on  their  alien  crags,  and 
day  by  day  gazed  out  through  their  tears  over  the 
sea  with  unappeasable  longing  toward  the  hazy 
bulk  which  was  the  specter  of  what  had  been  their 
paradise;  one  by  one  their  hearts  broke  and  they 
died. 

In  a  very  few  years  nothing  but  a  scant  remnant 
remained  alive.  A  handful  lingered  along  into  age. 


Following  the  Equator  275 

In  1864  the  last  man  died,  in   1876   the  last  woman 
died,  and  the  Spartans  of  Australasia  were  extinct. 

The  Whites  always  mean  well  when  they  take  human 
fish  out  of  the  ocean  and  try  to  make  them  dry  and 
warm  and  happy  and  comfortable  in  a  chicken  coop ; 
but  the  kindest-hearted  white  man  can  always  be 
depended  on  to  prove  himself  inadequate  when  he 
deals  with  savages.  He  cannot  turn  the  situation 
around  and  imagine  how  he  would  like  it  to  have  a 
well-meaning  savage  transfer  him  from  his  house 
and  his  church  and  his  clothes  and  his  books  and 
his  choice  food  to  a  hideous  wilderness  of  sand 
and  rocks  and  snow,  and  ice  and  sleet  and  storm  and 
blistering  sun,  with  no  shelter,  no  bed,  no  covering 
for  his  and  his  family's  naked  bodies,  and  nothing 
to  eat  but  snakes  and  grubs  and  offal.  This  would 
be  a  hell  to  him  ;  and  if  he  had  any  wisdom  he  would 
know  that  his  own  civilization  is  a  hell  to  the  savage 
—  but  he  hasn't  any,  and  has  never  had  any;  and 
for  lack  of  it  he  shut  up  those  poor  natives  in  the 
unimaginable  perdition  of  his  civilization,  committing 
his  crime  with  the  very  best  intentions,  and  saw 
those  poor  creatures  waste  away  under  his  tortures ; 
and  gazed  at  it,  vaguely  troubled  and  sorrowful,  and 
wondered  what  could  be  the  matter  with  them.  One 
is  almost  betrayed  into  respecting  those  criminals, 
they  were  so  sincerely  kind,  and  tender,  and  humane, 
and  well-meaning. 

They  didn't  know  why  those  exiled  savages  faded 
away,  and  they  did  their  honest  best  to  reason  it  out. 

B« 


276  Following  the  Equator 

And  one  man,  in  a  like  case,  in  New  South  Wales, 
did  reason  it  out  and  arrive  at  a  solution : 

**//  is  from  the  wrath  of  God,  which  is  revealed 
from  heaven  against  all  ungodliness  and  unrighteous 
ness  of  men." 

That  settles  it. 


CHAPTER    XXVIII. 

Let  us  be  thankful  for  the  fools.     But  for  them  the  rest  of  us  could  not  sue 
ceed.  —Pudd'nhcad  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  aphorism  does  really  seem  true:  "  Given  the 
Circumstances,  the  Man  will  appear."  But  the 
man  mustn't  appear  ahead  of  time,  or  it  will  spoil 
everything.  In  Robinson's  case  the  Moment  had 
been  approaching  for  a  quarter  of  a  century  —  and 
meantime  the  future  Conciliator  was  tranquilly  laying 
bricks  in  Hobart.  When  all  other  means  had  failed, 
the  Moment  had  arrived,  and  the  Bricklayer  put 
down  his  trowel  and  came  forward.  Earlier  he 
would  have  been  jeered  back  to  his  trowel  again. 
It  reminds  me  of  a  tale  that  was  told  me  by  a  Ken- 
tuckian  on  the  train  when  we  were  crossing  Montana. 
He  said  the  tale  was  current  in  Louisville  years  ago. 
He  thought  it  had  been  in  print,  but  could  not  re 
member.  At  any  rate,  in  substance  it  was  this,  as 
nearly  as  I  can  call  it  back  to  mind. 

A  few  years  before  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War 
it  began  to  appear  that  Memphis,  Tennessee,  was 
going  to  be  a  great  tobacco  entrepot — the  wise 
could  see  the  signs  of  it.  At  that  time  Memphis  had 

(277) 


278  Following  the  Equator 

a  wharfboat,  of  course.  There  was  a  paved  sloping 
wharf,  for  the  accommodation  of  freight,  but  the 
steamers  landed  on  the  outside  of  the  wharfboat,  and 
all  loading  and  unloading  was  done  across  it,  be 
tween  steamer  and  shore.  A  number  of  wharfboat 
clerks  were  needed,  and  part  of  the  time,  every  day, 
they  were  very  busy,  and  part  of  the  time  tediously 
idle.  They  were  boiling  over  with  youth  and  spirits, 
and  they  had  to  make  the  intervals  of  idleness 
endurable  in  some  way;  and  as  a  rule,  they  did  it 
by  contriving  practical  jokes  and  playing  them  upon 
each  other. 

The  favorite  butt  for   the  jokes  was  Ed   Jackson, 
because  he  played  none  himself,  and  was  easy  game 
for   other  people's  —  for  he   always   believed  what 
ever  was  told  him. 

One  day  he  told  the  others  his  scheme  for  his 
holiday.  He  was  not  going  fishing  or  hunting  this 
time  —  no,  he  had  thought  out  a  better  plan.  Out 
of  his  $40  a  month  he  had  saved  enough  for  his 
purpose,  in  an  economical  way,  and  he  was  going 
to  have  a  look  at  New  York. 

It  was  a  great  and  surprising  idea.  It  meant  travel 
—  immense  travel  —  in  those  days  it  meant  seeing 
the  world ;  it  was  the  equivalent  of  a  voyage  around 
it  in  ours.  At  first  the  other  youths  thought  his 
mind  was  affected,  but  when  they  found  that  he  was 
in  earnest,  the  next  thing  to  be  thought  of  was,  what 
sort  of  opportunity  this  venture  might  afford  for 
a  practical  joke. 


Following  the  Equator  279 

The  young  men  studied  over  the  matter,  then  held 
a  secret  consultation  and  made  a  plan.  The  idea 
was,  that  one  of  the  conspirators  should  offer  Ed  a 
letter  of  introduction  to  Commodore  Vanderbilt,  and 
trick  him  into  delivering  it.  It  would  be  easy  to  do 
this.  But  what  would  Ed  do  when  he  got  back  to 
Memphis?  That  was  a  serious  matter.  He  was 
good-hearted,  and  had  always  taken  the  jokes  pa 
tiently  ;  but  they  had  been  jokes  which  did  not 
humiliate  him,  did  not  bring  him  to  shame;  whereas, 
this  would  be  a  cruel  one  in  that  way,  and  to  play  it 
was  to  meddle  with  fire ;  for  with  all  his  good  nature, 
Ed  was  a  Southerner  —  and  the  English  of  that  was, 
that  when  he  came  back  he  would  kill  as  many  of  the 
conspirators  as  he  could  before  falling  himself. 
However;  the  chances  must  be  taken  —  it  wouldn't 
do  to  waste  such  a  joke  as  that. 

So  the  letter  was  prepared  with  great  care  and 
elaboration.  It  was  signed  Alfred  Fairchild,  and  was 
written  in  an  easy  and  friendly  spirit.  It  stated  that 
the  bearer  was  the  bosom  friend  of  the  writer's  son, 
and  was  of  good  parts  and  sterling  character,  and  it 
begged  the  Commodore  to  be  kind  to  the  young 
stranger  for  the  writer's  sake.  It  went  on  to  say, 
4  You  may  have  forgotten  me,  in  this  long  stretch 
of  time,  but  you  will  easily  call  me  back  out  of  your 
boyhood  memories  when  I  remind  you  of  how  we 
robbed  old  Stevenson's  orchard  that  night;  and  how, 
while  he  was  chasing  down  the  road  after  us,  we  cut 
across  the  field  and  doubled  back  and  sold  his  own 


280  Following  the  Equator 

apples  to  his  own  cook  for  a  hatful  of  doughnuts; 
and  the  time  that  we — "  and  so  forth  and  so  on, 
bringing  in  names  of  imaginary  comrades,  and  de 
tailing  all  sorts  of  wild  and  absurd  and,  of  course, 
wholly  imaginary  schoolboy  pranks  and  adventures, 
but  putting  them  into  lively  and  telling  shape. 

With  all  gravity  Ed  was  asked  if  he  would  like  to 
have  a  letter  to  Commodore  Vanderbilt,  the  great 
millionaire.  It  was  expected  that  the  question  would 
astonish  Ed,  and  it  did. 

"  What?     Do  you  know  that  extraordinary  man?" 

"No;  but  my  father  does.  They  were  school 
boys  together.  And  if  you  like,  I'll  write  and  ask 
father.  I  know  he'll  be  glad  to  give  it  to  you  for 
my  sake." 

Ed  could  not  find  words  capable  of  expressing  his 
gratitude  and  delight.  The  three  days  passed,  and 
the  letter  was  put  into  his  hands.  He  started  on  his 
trip,  still  pouring  out  his  thanks  while  he  shook  good 
bye  all  around.  And  when  he  was  out  of  sight  his 
comrades  let  fly  their  laughter  in  a  storm  of  happy 
satisfaction  —  and  then  quieted  down,  and  were  less 
happy,  less  satisfied.  For  the  old  doubts  as  to  the 
wisdom  of  this  deception  began  to  intrude  again. 

Arrived  in  New  York,  Ed  found  his  way  to  Com 
modore  Vanderbilt's  business  quarters,  and  was 
ushered  into  a  large  anteroom,  where  a  score  of 
people  were  patiently  awaiting  their  turn  for  a  two- 
minute  interview  with  the  millionaire  in  his  private 
office.  A  servant  asked  for  Ed's  card,  and  got  the 


Following  the  Equator  281 

letter  instead.     Ed  was  sent  for  a  moment  later,  and 
found  Mr.  Vanderbilt  alone,  with  the  letter  —  open 

—  in  his  hand. 

41  Pray  sit  down,  Mr.  —  er" — 

"Jackson." 

"Ah  —  sit  down,  Mr.  Jackson.  By  the  opening 
sentences  it  seems  to  be  a  letter  from  an  old  friend. 
Allow  me  —  I  will  run  my  eye  through  it.  He 
says  —  he  says  —  why,  who  is  it?"  He  turned  the 
sheet  and  found  the  signature.  "Alfred  Fairchild 

—  hm  —  Fairchild  —  I  don't  recall  the  name.     But 
that    is    nothing  —  a    thousand     names    have    gone 
from    me.      He    says  —  he    says  —  hm  —  hm  —  oh, 
dear,  but  it's  good!      Oh,   it's  rare!      I  don't  quite 
remember  it,  but  I  seem  to  —  it'll  all  come  back  to 
me    presently.      He    says  —  he   says  —  hm  —  hm  — 
oh,  but  that  was  a  game  !      Oh,  spl-endid  !      How  it 
carries   me  back!     It's  all  dim,   of  course  —  it's  a 
long   time    ago  —  and    the    names  —  some    of     the 
names  are  wavery  and  indistinct  —  but  sho',  I  know 
it  happened  —  I  can  feel  it!   and  lord,  how  it  warms 
my  heart,  and   brings  back  my  lost  youth !     Well, 
well,  well,  I've  got  to  come  back  into  this  work-a- 
day  world  now  —  business    presses    and  people  are 
waiting — I'll  keep  the  rest  for  bed  to-night,  and  live 
my  youth  over  again.     And  you'll  thank  Fairchild 
for  me  when  you  see  him  —  I  used  to  call  him  Alf, 
I  think  — and  you'll  give  him  my  gratitude  for  what 
this  letter  has  done  for  the  tired  spirit   of  a   hard- 
worked   man;   and  tell  him  there  isn't  anything  that 


282  Following  the  Equator 

I  can  do  for  him  or  any  friend  of  his  that  I  won't  do. 
And  as  for  you,  my  lad,  you  are  my  guest;  you 
can't  stop  at  any  hotel  in  New  York.  Sit  where  you 
are  a  little  while,  till  I  get  through  with  these  people, 
then  we'll  go  home.  I'll  take  care  of  you,  my  boy 
—  make  yourself  easy  as  to  that." 

Ed  stayed  a  week,  and  had  an  immense  time  —  and 
never  suspected  that  the  Commodore's  shrewd  eyes 
was  on  him,  and  that  he  was  daily  being  weighed  and 
measured  and  analyzed  and  tried  and  tested. 

Yes,  he  had  an  immense  time ;  and  never  wrote 
home,  but  saved  it  all  up  to  tell  when  he  should  get 
back.  Twice,  with  proper  modesty  and  decency, 
he  proposed  to  end  his  visit,  but  the  Commodore 
said,  "No  —  wait;  leave  it  to  me;  I' 11  tell  you  when 
to  go.'1 

In  those  days  the  Commodore  was  making  some 
of  those  vast  combinations  of  his  —  consolidations 
of  warring  odds  and  ends  of  railroads  into  harmoni 
ous  systems,  and  concentrations  of  floating  and  rud 
derless  commerce  in  effective  centers  —  and  among 
other  things  his  far-seeing  eye  had  detected  the  con 
vergence  of  that  huge  tobacco-commerce,  already 
spoken  of,  toward  Memphis,  and  he  had  resolved  to 
set  his  grasp  upon  it  and  make  it  his  own. 

The  week  came  to  an  end.  Then  the  Commodore 
said: 

"  Now  you  can  start  home.  But  first  we  will  have 
some  more  talk  about  that  tobacco  matter.  I  know 
you  now.  I  know  your  abilities  as  well  as  you  know 


Foflowing  the  Equator  283 

them  yourself  —  perhaps  better.  You  understand 
that  tobacco  matter ;  you  understand  that  I  am  go 
ing  to  take  possession  of  it,  and  you  also  understand 
the  plans  which  I  have  matured  for  doing  it.  What 
I  want  is  a  man  who  knows  rny  mind,  and  is  qualified 
to  represent  me  in  Memphis,  and  be  in  supreme 
command  of  that  important  business  —  and  I  ap 
point  you/' 

"Me!  " 

44  Yes.  Your  salary  will  be  high  —  of  course  — 
for  you  are  representing  me.  Later  you  will  earn 
increases  of  it,  and  will  get  them.  You  will  need  a 
small  army  of  assistants;  choose  them  yourself  — 
and  carefully.  Take  no  man  for  friendship's  sake; 
but,  all  things  being  equal,  take  the  man  you  know, 
take  your  friend,  in  preference  to  the  stranger." 

After  some  further  talk  under  this  head,  the  Com 
modore  said:  "  Good-bye,  my  boy,  and  thank  Alf 
for  me,  for  sending  you  to  me." 

When  Ed  reached  Memphis  he  rushed  down  to  the 
wharf  in  a  fever  to  tell  his  great  news  and  thank  the 
boys  over  and  over  again  for  thinking  to  give  him 
the  letter  to  Mr.  Vanderbilt,  It  happened  to  be  one 
of  those  idle  times.  Blazing  hot  noonday,  and  no 
sign  of  life  on  the  wharf.  But  as  Ed  threaded  his 
way  among  the  freight  piles,  he  saw  a  white  linen 
figure  stretched  in  slumber  upon  a  pile  of  grain-sacks 
under  an  awning,  and  said  to  himself,  "That's  one 
of  them,"  and  hastened  his  step;  next,  he  said, 
"It's  Charley  —it's  Fairchild  —  vood  "  ;  and  the 


284  Following  the  Equator 

next  moment  laid  an  affectionate  hand  on  the  sleeper's 
shoulder.  The  eyes  opened  lazily,  took  one  glance, 
the  face  blanched,  the  form  whirled  itself  from  the 
sack-pile,  and  in  an  instant  Ed  was  alone  and  Fair- 
child  was  flying  for  the  wharfboat  like  the  wind  ! 

Ed  was  dazed,  stupefied.  Was  Fairchild  crazy? 
What  could  be  the  meaning  of  this?  He  started 
slow  and  dreamily  down  toward  the  wharfboat; 
turned  the  corner  of  a  freight-pile  and  came  sud 
denly  upon  two  of  the  boys.  They  were  lightly 
laughing  over  some  pleasant  matter;  they  heard  his 
step,  and  glanced  up  just  as  he  discovered  them; 
the  laugh  died  abruptly ;  and  before  Ed  could  speak 
they  were  off,  and  sailing  over  barrels  and  bales  like 
hunted  deer.  Again  Ed  was  paralyzed.  Had  the 
boys  all  gone  mad  ?  What  could  be  the  explanation 
of  this  extraordinary  conduct?  And  so,  dreaming 
along,  he  reached  the  wharfboat,  and  stepped  aboard 
—  nothing  but  silence  there,  and  vacancy.  He 
crossed  the  deck,  turned  the  corner  to  go  down  the 
outer  guard,  heard  a  fervent  — 

"  O  Lord  !  "  and  saw  a  white  linen  form  plunge 
overboard. 

The  youth  came  up  coughing  and  strangling,  and 
cried  out : 

"Go  'way  from  here!  You  let  me  alone.  / 
didn't  do  it,  I  swear  I  didn't!  " 

."Didn't  do  what?" 

"  Give  you  the—" 

"  Never  mind  what  you  didn't  do  —  come  out  of 


Following  the  Equator  285 

that !  What  makes  you  all  act  so  ?  What  have  / 
done?" 

"You?  Why  you  haven't  done  anything. 
But—" 

"Well,  then,  what  have  you  got  against  me? 
What  do  you  all  treat  me  so  for?  " 

"I  —  er— -but  haven't  you  got  anything  against 
usf" 

"  Of  course  not.  What  put  such  a  thing  into  your 
head?" 

11  Honor  bright  —  you  haven't?  " 

11  Honor  bright." 

"Swear  it!" 

"  I  don't  know  what  in  the  world  you  mean,  but 
I  swear  it,  anyway." 

"And  you'll  shake  hands  with  me?  " 

"Goodness  knows  I'll  be  glad  to!  Why,  I'm 
just  starving  to  shake  hands  with  somebody  !  " 

The  swimmer  muttered,  "  Hang  him,  he  smelt  a 
rat  and  never  delivered  the  letter  !  —  but  it's  all  right, 
I'm  not  going  to  fetch  up  the  subject."  And  he 
crawled  out  and  came  dripping  and  draining  to  shake 
hands.  First  one  and  then  another  of  the  con 
spirators  showed  up  cautiously  —  armed  to  the  teeth 
—  took  in  the  amicable  situation,  then  ventured 
warily  forward  and  joined  the  love-feast. 

And  to  Ed's  eager  inquiry  as  to  what  made  them 
act  as  they  had  been  acting,  they  answered  evasively 
and  pretended  that  they  had  put  it  up  as  a  joke,  to 
see  what  he  would  do.  It  was  the  best  explanation 


286  Following  the  Equator 

they  could  invent  at  such  short  notice.  And  eacn 
said  to  himself,  "  He  never  delivered  that  letter,  and 
the  joke  is  on  tis,  if  he  only  knew  it  or  we  were  dull 
enough  to  come  out  and  tell." 

Then,  of  course,  they  wanted  to  know  all  about 
the  trip  ;  and  he  said  : 

"  Come  right  up  on  the  boiler  deck  and  order  the 
drinks  —  it's  my  treat.  I'm  going  to  tell  you  all 
about  it.  And  to-night  it's  my  treat  again  —  and 
we'll  have  oysters  and  a  time !  " 

When  the  drinks  were  brought  and  cigars  lighted, 
Ed  said : 

"Well,  when  I  delivered  the  letter  to  Mr. 
Vanderbilt—  " 

"  Great  Scott!" 

"  Gracious,  how  you  scared  me.  What's  the 
matter?" 

"Oh  —  er  —  nothing.  Nothing — it  was  a  tack- 
in  the  chair-seat,"  said  one. 

"But  you  all  said  it.  However,  no  matter. 
When  I  delivered  the  letter — " 

"  Did  you  deliver  it?  "  And  they  looked  at  each 
other  as  people  might  who  thought  that  maybe  they 
were  dreaming. 

Then  they  settled  to  listening;  and  as  the  story  deep 
ened  and  its  marvels  grew,  the  amazement  of  it  made 
them  dumb,  and  the  interest  of  it  took  their  breath. 
They  hardly  uttered  a  whisper  during  two  hours,  but 
sat  like  petrifactions  and  drank  in  the  immortal  ro- 
oiance.  At  last  the  tale  was  ended,  and  Ed  said : 


Following  the  Equator  287 

"And  it's  all  owing  to  you,  boys,  and  you'll  never 
find  me  ungrateful  —  bless  your  hearts,  the  best 
friends  a  fellow  ever  had!  You'll  all  have  places; 
I  want  every  one  of  you.  I  know  you  —  I  know 
you  '  by  the  back?  as  the  gamblers  say.  You're 
jokers,  and  all  that,  but  you're  sterling,  with  the  hall 
mark  on.  And  Charley  Fairchild,  you  shall  be  my 
first  assistant  and  right  hand,  because  of  your  first- 
class  ability,  and  because  you  got  me  the  letter,  and 
for  your  father's  sake  who  wrote  it  for  me,  and  to 
please  Mr.  Vanderbilt,  who  said  it  would !  And 
here's  to  that  great  man  —  drink  hearty!  " 

Yes,  when  the  Moment  comes,  the  Man  appears 
—  even  if  he  is  a  thousand  miles  away,  and  has  to 
be  discovered  by  a  practical  joke. 


f- 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

When  people  do  not  respect  us  we  are  sharply  offended  ;  yet  deep  down  in 
his  private  heart  no  man  much  respects  himself. 

— PudoTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

NECESSARILY,  the  human  interest  is  the  first  in 
terest  in  the  log-book  of  any  country.  The 
annals  of  Tasmania,  in  whose  shadow  we  were  sail 
ing,  are  lurid  with  that  feature.  Tasmania  was  a 
convict-dump,  in  old  times;  this  has  been  indicated 
in  the  account  of  the  Conciliator,  where  reference 
is  made  to  vain  attempts  of  desperate  convicts 
to  win  to  permanent  freedom,  after  escaping  from 
Macquarne  Harbor  and  the  "  Gates  of  Hell." 
In  the  early  days  Tasmania  had  a  great  population 
of  convicts,  of  both  sexes  and  all  ages,  and  a  bitter 
hard  life  they  had.  In  one'  spot  there  was  a  settle 
ment  of  juvenile  convicts  —  children  —  who  had 
been  sent  thither  from  their  home  and  their  friends 
on  the  other  side  of  the  globe  to  expiate  their 
"crimes." 

In  due  course  our  ship  entered  the  estuary  called 
the  Derwent,  at  whose  head  stands  Hobart,  the  cap 
ital  of  Tasmania.  The  Derwent's  shores  furnish 

(288) 


Following  the  Equator  289 

scenery  cf  an  interesting  sort.  The  historian 
Laurie,  whose  book,  "The  Story  of  Australasia," 
is  just  out,  invoices  its  features  with  considerable 
truth  and  intemperance:  "The  marvelous  pictur- 
esqueness  of  every  point  of  view,  combined  with 
the  clear  balmy  atmosphere  and  the  transparency  of 
the  ocean  depths,  must  have  delighted  and  deeply 
impressed"  the  early  explorers.  "  If  the  rock- 
bound  coasts,  sullen,  defiant,  and  lowering,  seemed 
uninviting,  these  were  occasionally  broken  into 
charmingly  alluring  coves  floored  with  golden  sand, 
clad  with  evergreen  shrubbery,  and  adorned  with 
every  variety  of  indigenous  wattle,  she-oak,  wild 
flower,  and  fern,  from  the  delicately  graceful 
*  maiden-hair  '  to  the  palm-like  *  old  man  ' ;  while 
the  majestic  gum-tree,  clean  and  smooth  as  the  mast 
of  *  some  tall  ammiral,'  pierces  the  clear  air  to  the 
height  of  230  feet  or  more." 

It  looked  so  to  me.  "  Coasting  along  Tasman's 
Peninsula,  what  a  shock  of  pleasant  wonder  must 
have  struck  the  early  mariner  on  suddenly  sighting 
Cape  Pillar,  with  its  cluster  of  black-ribbed  basaltic 
columns  rising  to  a  height  of  900  feet,  the  hydra 
head  wreathed  in  a  turban  of  fleecy  cloud,  the  base 
lashed  by  jealous  waves  spouting  angry  fountains  of 
foam." 

That  is  well  enough,  but  I  did  not  suppose  those 
snags  were  900  feet  high.  Still  they  were  a  very 
fine  show.  They  stood  boldly  out  by  themselves, 
and  made  a  fascinatingly  odd  spectacle.  But  there 

"*  ' 


I    -4 


jc^i> 


290  Following  the  Equator 

was  nothing  about  their  appearance  to  suggest  the 
heads  of  a  hydra.  They  looked  like  a  row  of  lofty 
slabs  with  their  upper  ends  tapered  to  the  shape  of 
a  carving-knife  point;  in  fact,  the  early  voyager, 
ignorant  of  their  great  height,  might  have  mistaken 
them  for  a  rusty  old  rank  of  piles  that  had  sagged 
this  way  and  that  out  of  the  perpendicular. 

The  Peninsula  is  lofty,  rocky,  and  densely  clothed 
with  scrub,  or  brush,  or  both.  It  is  joined  to  the 
main  by  a  low  neck.  At  this  junction  was  formerly 
a  convict  station  called  Port  Arthur  —  a  place  hard 
to  escape  from.  Behind  it  was  the  wilderness  of 
scrub,  in  which  a  fugitive  would  soon  starve;  in 
front  was  the  narrow  neck,  with  a  cordon  of  chained 
dogs  across  it,  and  a  line  of  lanterns,  and  a  fence  of 
living  guards,  armed.  We  saw  the  place  as  we 
swept  by  —  that  is,  we  had  a  glimpse  of  what  we 
were  told  was  the  entrance  to  Port  Arthur.  The 
glimpse  was  worth  something,  as  a  remembrancer, 
but  that  was  all. 

"The  voyage  thence  up  the  Derwent  Frith  dis 
plays  a  grand  succession  of  fairy  visions,  in  its  entire 
length  elsewhere  unequaled.  In  gliding  over  the 
deep  blue  sea  studded  with  lovely  islets  luxuriant  to 
the  water's  edge,  one  is  at  a  loss  which  scene  to 
choose  for  contemplation  and  to  admire  most. 
When  the  Huon  and  Bruni  have  been  passed,  there 
seems  no  possible  chance  of  a  rival ;  but  suddenly 
Mount  Wellington,  massive  and  noble  like  his  brother 
Etna,  literally  heaves  in  sight,  sternly  guarded  on 


Following  the  Equator  291 

either  hand  by  Mounts  Nelson  and  Rumney;  presently 
we  arrive  at  Sullivan's  Cove — Hobart!  " 

It  is  an  attractive  town.  It  sits  on  low  hills  that 
slope  to  the  harbor  —  a  harbor  that  looks  like  a  river, 
and  is  as  smooth  as  one.  Its  still  surface  is  pictured 
with  dainty  reflections  of  boats  and  grassy  banks  and 
luxuriant  foliage.  Back  of  the  town  rise  highlands 
that  are  clothed  in  woodland  loveliness,  and  over  the 
way  is  that  noble  mountain,  Wellington,  a  stately 
bulk,  a  most  majestic  pile.  How  beautiful  is  the 
whole  region,  for  form,  and  grouping,  and  opulence, 
and  freshness  of  foliage,  and  variety  of  color,  and 
grace  and  shapeliness  of  the  hills,  the  capes, 
the  promontories ;  and  then,  the  splendor  of  the 
sunlight,  the  dim  rich  distances,  the  charm  of 
the  water-glimpses !  And  it  was  in  this  para 
dise  that  the  yellow-liveried  convicts  were  landed, 
and  the  Corps-bandits  quartered,  and  the  wanton 
slaughter  of  the  kangaroo-chasing  black  innocents 
consummated  on  that  autumn  day  in  May,  in 
the  brutish  old  time.  It  was  all  out  of  keeping 
with  the  place,  a  sort  of  bringing  of  heaven  and  hell 
together. 

The  remembrance  of  this  paradise  reminds  me  that 
it  was  at  Plobart  that  we  struck  the  head  of  the  pro 
cession  of  Junior  Englands.  We  were  to  encounter 
other  sections  of  it  in  New  Zealand,  presently,  and 
others  later  in  Natal.  Wherever  the  exiled  English 
man  can  find  in  his  new  home  resemblances  to  his 
old  one,  he  is  touched  to  the  marrow  of  his  being; 
B« 


292  Following  the  Equator 

the  love  that  is  in  his  heart  inspires  his  imagination, 
and  these  allied  forces  transfigure  those  resemblances 
into  authentic  duplicates  of  the  revered  originals. 
It  is  beautiful,  the  feeling  which  works  this  enchant 
ment,  and  it  compels  one's  homage;  compels  it,  and 
also  compels  one's  assent  —  compels  it  always  — 
even  when,  as  happens  sometimes,  one  does  not  see 
the  resemblances  as  clearly  as  does  the  exile  who  is 
pointing  them  out. 

The  resemblances  do  exist,  it  is  quite  true ;  and 
often  they  cunningly  approximate  the  originals  — 
but  after  all,  in  the  matter  of  certain  physical  patent 
rights  there  is  only  one  England.  Now  that  I  have 
sampled  the  globe,  I  am  not  in  doubt.  There  is  a 
beauty  of  Switzerland,  and  it  is  repeated  in  the 
glaciers  and  snowy  ranges  of  many  parts  of  the 
earth;  there  is  a  beauty  of  the  fiord,  and  it  is  re 
peated  in  New  Zealand  and  Alaska ;  there  is  a  beauty 
of  Hawaii,  and  it  is  repeated  in  ten  thousand  islands 
of  the  Southern  seas ;  there  is  a  beauty  of  the  prairie 
and  the  plain,  and  it  is  repeated  here  and  there  in  the 
earth ;  each  of  these  is  worshipful,  each  is  perfect  in 
its  way,  yet  holds  no  monopoly  of  its  beauty;  but 
that  beauty  which  is  England  is  alone  —  it  has  no 
duplicate.  It  is  made  up  of  very  simple  details  — 
just  grass,  and  trees,  and  shrubs,  and  roads,  and 
hedges,  and  gardens,  and  houses,  and  vines,  and 
churches,  and  castles,  and  here  and  there  a  ruin  — 
and  over  it  all  a  mellow  dream-haze  of  history.  But 
its  beauty  is  incomparable,  and  all  its  own. 


-T- 

Following  the  Equator  293 

Hobart  has  a  peculiarity  —  it  is  the  neatest  town 
that  the  sun  shines  on  ;  and  I  incline  to  believe 
that  it  is  also  the  cleanest.  However  that  may 
be,  its  supremacy  in  neatness  is  not  to  be  ques 
tioned.  There  cannot  be  another  town  in  the 
world  that  has  no  shabby  exteriors;  no  rickety 
gates  and  fences,  no  neglected  houses  crumbling 
to  ruin,  no  crazy  and  unsightly  sheds,  no  weed- 
grown  front-yards  of  the  poor,  no  back-yards 
littered  with  tin  cans  and  old  boots  and  empty 
bottles,  no  rubbish  in  the  gutters,  no  clutter  on 
the  sidewalks,  no  outer-borders  fraying  out  into 
dirty  lanes  and  tin-patched  huts.  No,  in  Hobart  all 
the  aspects  are  tidy,  and  all  a  comfort  to  the  eye  ; 
the  modestest  cottage  looks  combed  and  brushed, 
and  has  its  vines,  its  flowers,  its  neat  fence, 
its  neat  gate,  its  comely  cat  asleep  on  the  window 
ledge. 

We  had  a  glimpse  of  the  museum,  by  courtesy  of 
the  American  gentleman  who  is  curator  of  it.  It 
has  samples  of  half-a-dozen  different  kinds  of  mar 
supials  *  —  one,  the  "Tasmanian  devil";  that  is,  I 
think  he  was  one  of  them.  And  there  was  a  fish 
with  lungs.  When  the  water  dries  up  it  can  live  in 
the  mud.  Most  curious  of  all  was  a  parrot  that  kills 

*  A  marsupial  is  a  plantigrade  vertebrate  whose  specialty  is  its  pocket. 
In  some  countries  it  is  extinct,  in  the  others  it  is  rare.  The  first  Ameri 
can  marsupials  were  Stephen  Girard,  Mr.  Astor,  and  the  opossum;  the 
principal  marsupials  of  the  Southern  Hemisphere  are  Mr.  Rhodes  and 
the  kangaroo.  I,  myself,  am  the  latest  marsupial.  Also,  I  might  boast 
that  I  have  the  largest  pocket  of  them  all.  But  there  is  nothing  in  that* 


4- 


294  Following  the  Equator 

sheep.  On  one  great  sheep-run  this  bird  killed  a 
thousand  sheep  in  a  whole  year.  He  doesn't  want 
the  whole  sheep,  but  only  the  kidney-fat.  This  re 
stricted  taste  makes  him  an  expensive  bird  to  sup 
port.  To  get  the  fat  he  drives  his  beak  in  and  rips 
it  out ;  the  wound  is  mortal.  This  parrot  furnishes 
a  notable  example  of  evolution  brought  about  by 
changed  conditions.  When  the  sheep  culture  was 
introduced,  it  presently  brought  famine  to  the  parrot 
by  exterminating  a  kind  of  grub  which  had  always 
thitherto  been  the  parrot's  diet.  The  miseries  of 
hunger  made  the  bird  willing  to  eat  raw  flesh,  since 
it  could  get  no  other  food,  and  it  began  to  pick 
remnants  of  meat  from  sheep  skins  hung  out  on  the 
fences  to  dry.  It  soon  came  to  prefer  sheep  meat 
to  any  other  food,  and  by  and  by  it  came  to  prefer 
the  kidney-fat  to  any  other  detail  of  the  sheep.  The 
parrot's  bill  was  not  well  shaped  for  digging  out  the 
fat,  but  Nature  fixed  that  matter;  she  altered  the 
bill's  shape,  and  now  the  parrot  can  dig  out  kidney- 
fat  better  than  the  Chief  Justice  of  the  Supreme 
Court,  or  anybody  else,  for  that  matter  —  even  an 
Admiral. 

And  there  was  another  curiosity —  quite  a  stunning 
0112, 1  thought :  Arrow-heads  and  knives  just  like  those 
which  Primeval  Man  made  out  of  flint,  and  thought 
he  had  done  such  a  wonderful  thing  —  yes,  and  has 
been  humored  and  coddled  in  that  superstition  by 
this  age  of  admiring  scientists  until  there  is  probably 
no  living  with  him  in  the  other  world  by  now.  Yet 


k^ 

Following  the  Equator  295 

here  is  his  finest  and  nicest  work  exactly  duplicated 
in  our  day;  and  by  people  who  have  never  heard  of 
him  or  his  works:  by  aborigines  who  lived  in  the 
islands  of  these  seas,  within  our  time.  And  they 
not  only  duplicated  those  works  of  art  but  did  it  in 
the  brittlest  and  most  treacherous  of  substances  — 
glass  :  made  them  out  of  old  brandy  bottles  flung 
out  of  the  British  camps ;  millions  of  tons  of  them. 
It  is  time  for  Primeval  Man  to  make  a  little  less 
noise,  now.  He  has  had  his  day.  He  is  not  what 
he  used  to  be. 

We  had  a  drive  through  a  bloomy  and  odorous 
fairy-land,  to  the  Refuge  for  the  Indigent  —  a 
spacious  and  comfortable  home,  with  hospitals,  etc., 
for  both  sexes.  There  was  a  crowd  there,  of  the 
oldest  people  I  have  ever  seen.  It  was  like  being 
suddenly  set  down  in  a  new  world  —  a  weird  world 
where  Youth  has  never  been,  a  world  sacred  to  Age, 
and  bowed  forms,  and  wrinkles.  Out  of  the  359  per 
sons  present,  223  were  ex-convicts,  and  could  have 
told  stirring  tales,  no  doubt,  if  they  had  been  minded 
to  talk;  42  of  the  359  were  past  80,  and  several  were 
close  upon  90 ;  the  average  age  at  death  there  is  76 
years.  As  for  me,  I  have  no  use  for  that  place;  it 
is  too  healthy.  Seventy  is  old  enough  —  after  that, 
there  is  too  much  risk.  Youth  and  gaiety  might 
vanish,  any  day  —  and  then,  what  is  left?  Death  in 
life;  death  without  its  privileges,  death  without  its 
benefits.  There  were  185  women  in  that  Refuge, 
and  Si  of  them  were  ex-convicts. 


296  Following  the  Equator 

The  steamer  disappointed  us.  Instead  of  making 
a  long  visit  at  Hobart,  as  usual,  she  made  a  short 
one.  So  we  got  but  a  glimpse  of  Tasmania,  and 
then  moved  on. 


CHAPTER   XXX. 

Nature  makes  the  locust  with  an  appetite  tor  crops ;  man  would  have  made 
him  with  an  appetite  for  sand.  — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WE  spent  part  of  an  afternoon  and  a  night  at  sea, 
and  reached  Bluff,  in  New  Zealand,  early  in 
the  morning.  Bluff  is  at  the  bottom  of  the  middle 
island,  and  is  away  down  south,  nearly  forty-seven 
degrees  below  the  equator.  It  lies  as  far  south  of 
the  line  as  Quebec  lies  north  of  it,  and  the  climates  of 
the  two  should  be  alike ;  but  for  some  reason  or  other 
it  has  not  been  so  arranged.  Quebec  is  hot  in  the 
summer  and  cold  in  the  winter,  but  Bluff's  climate 
is  less  intense  ;  the  cold  weather  is  not  very  cold, 
the  hot  weather  is  not  very  hot;  and  the  difference 
between  the  hottest  month  and  the  coldest  is  but  17 
degrees  Fahrenheit. 

In  New  Zealand  the  rabbit  plague  began  at  Bluff. 
The  man  who  introduced  the  rabbit  there  was  ban 
queted  and  lauded;  but  they  would  hang  him,  now, 
if  they  could  get  him.  In  England  the  natural 
enemy  of  the  rabbit  is  detested  and  persecuted ;  in 
the  Bluff  region  the  natural  enemy  of  the  rabbit  is  hon 
ored,  and  his  person  is  sacred.  The  rabbit's  natural 
enemy  in  England  is  the  poacher;  in  Bluff  its  natural 

(297) 


298  Following  the  Equator 

enemy  is  the  stoat,  the  weasel,  the  ferret,  the  cat, 
and  the  mongoose.  In  England  any  person  below 
the  Heir  who  is  caught  with  a  rabbit  in  his  posses 
sion  must  satisfactorily  explain  how  it  got  there,  or 
he  will  suffer  fine  and  imprisonment,  together  with 
extinction  of  his  peerage;  in  Bluff,  the  cat  found 
with  a  rabbit  in  its  possession  does  not  have  to  ex 
plain  —  everybody  looks  the  other  way ;  the  person 
caught  noticing  would  suffer  fine  and  imprisonment, 
with  extinction  of.  peerage.  This  is  a  sure  way  to 
undermine  the  moral  fabric  of  a  cat.  Thirty  years 
from  now  there  will  not  be  a  moral  cat  in  New  Zea 
land.  Some  think  there  is  none  there  now.  In 
England  the  poacher  is  watched,  tracked,  hunted  — 
he  dare  not  show  his  face;  in  Bluff  the  cat,  the 
weasel,  the  stoat,  and  the  mongoose  go  up  and 
down,  whither  they  will,  unmolested.  By  a  law  of 
the  legislature,  posted  where  all  may  read,  it  is 
decreed  that  any  person  found  in  possession  of  one 
of  these  creatures  (dead)  must  satisfactorily  explain 
the  circumstances  or  pay  a  fine  of  not  less  than  £5 , 
nor  more  than  £20.  The  revenue  from  this  source 
is  not  large.  Persons  who  want  to  pay  a  hundred 
dollars  for  a  dead  cat  are  getting  rarer  and  rarer  every 
day.  This  is  bad,  for  the  revenue  was  to  go  to  the 
endowment  of  a  university.  All  governments  are 
more  or  less  short-sighted :  in  England  they  fine  a 
poacher,  whereas  he  ought  to  be  banished  to  New 
Zealand.  New  Zealand  would  pay  his  way,  and 
give  him  wages. 


Following  the  Equator  299 

It  was  from  Bluff  that  we  ought  to  have  cut  across 
to  the  west  coast  and  visited  the  New  Zealand 
Switzerland,  a  land  of  superb  scenery,  made  up  of 
snowy  grandeurs,  and  mighty  glaciers,  and  beautiful 
lakes;  and  over  there,  also,  are  the  wonderful  rivals 
of  the  Norwegian  and  Alaskan  fiords ;  and  for  neigh 
bor,  a  waterfall  of  1,900  feet;  but  we  were  obliged 
to  postpone  the  trip  to  some  later  and  indefinite  time. 

November  6.  A  lovely  summer  morning ;  brilliant 
blue  sky.  A  few  miles  out  from  Invercargill,  passed 
through  vast  level  green  expanses  snowed  over  with 
sheep.  Fine  to  see.  The  green,  deep  and  very 
vivid  sometimes;  at  other  times  less  so,  but  delicate 
and  lovely.  A  passenger  reminds  me  that  I  am  in 
"  the  England  of  the  Far  South." 

Dunedin,  same  date.  The  town  justifies  Michael 
Davitt's  praises.  The  people  are  Scotch.  They 
stopped  here  on  their  way  from  home  to  heaven  — 
thinking  they  had  arrived.  The  population  is  stated 
at  40,000,  by  Malcolm  Ross,  journalist;  stated  by 
an  M.  P.  at  60,000.  A  journalist  cannot  lie. 

To  the  residence  of  Dr.  Hockin.  He  has  a  fine 
collection  of  books  relating  to  New  Zealand;  and 
his  house  is  a  museum  of  Maori  art  and  antiquities. 
He  has  pictures  and  prints  in  color  of  many  native 
chiefs  of  the  past  —  some  of  them  of  note  in  history. 
There  is  nothing  of  the  savage  in  the  faces ;  nothing 
could  be  finer  than  these  men's  features,  nothing 
more  intellectual  than  these  faces,  nothing  more 
masculine,  nothing  nobler  than  their  aspect.  The 


300  Following  the  Equator 

aboriginals  of  Australia  and  Tasmania  looked  the 
savage,  but  these  chiefs  looked  like  Roman  patricians. 
The  tattooing  in  these  portraits  ought  to  suggest 
the  savage,  of  course,  but  it  does  not.  The  designs 
are  so  flowing  and  graceful  and  beautiful  that  they 
are  a  most  satisfactory  decoration.  It  takes  but 
fifteen  minutes  to  get  reconciled  to  the  tattooing, 
and  but  fifteen  more  to  perceive  that  it  is  just  the 
thing.  After  that,  the  undecorated  European  face 
is  unpleasant  and  ignoble. 

Dr.  Hockin  gave  us  a  ghastly  curiosity —  a  ligni- 
fied  caterpillar  with  a  plant  growing  out  of  the  back 
of  its  neck  —  a  plant  with  a  slender  stem  four  inches 
high.  It  happened  not  by  accident,  but  by  design 
—  Nature's  design.  This  caterpillar  was  in  the  act 
of  loyally  carrying  out  a  law  inflicted  upon  him  by 
Nature  —  a  law  purposely  inflicted  upon  him  to  get 
him  into  trouble  —  a  law  which  was  a  trap ;  in  pur 
suance  of  this  law  he  made  the  proper  preparations 
for  turning  himself  into  a  night-moth ;  that  is  to  say, 
he  dug  a  little  trench,  a  little  grave,  and  then 
stretched  himself  out  in  it  on  his  stomach  and 
partially  buried  himself  —  then  Nature  was  ready  for 
him.  She  blew  the  spores  of  a  peculiar  fungus 
through  the  air  —  with  a  purpose.  Some  of  them 
fell  into  a  crease  in  the  back  of  the  caterpillar's 
neck,  and  began  to  sprout  and  grow  —  for  there  was 
soil  there  —  he  had  not  washed  his  neck.  The  roots 
forced  themselves  down  into  the  worm's  person,  and 
rearward  along  through  its  body,  sucking  up  the 


Following  the  Equator  301 

creature's  juices  for  sap;  the  worm  slowly  died,  and 
turned  to  wood.  And  here  he  was  now,  a  wooden 
caterpillar,  with  every  detail  of  his  former  physique 
delicately  and  exactly  preserved  and  perpetuated, 
and  with  that  stem  standing  up  out  of  him  for  his 
monument — monument  commemorative  of  his  own 
loyalty  and  of  Nature's  unfair  return  for  it. 

Nature  is  always  acting  like  that.  Mrs.  X.  said 
(of  course)  that  the  caterpillar  was  not  conscious 
and  didn't  suffer.  She  should  have  known.,  better. 
No  caterpillar  can  deceive  Nature.  If  this  one 
couldn't  suffer,  Nature  would  have  known  it  and 
would  have  hunted  up  another  caterpillar.  Not  that 
she  would  have  let  this  one  go,  merely  because  it 
was  defective.  No.  She  would  have  waited  and  let 
him  turn  into  a  night-moth;  and  then  fried  him  in 
the  candle. 

Nature  cakes  a  fish's  eyes  over  with  parasites,  so 
that  it  shan't  be  able  to  avoid  its  enemies  or  find  its 
food.  She  sends  parasites  into  a  star-fish's  system, 
which  clog  up  its  prongs  and  swell  them  and  make 
them  so  uncomfortable  that  the  poor  creature  de 
livers  itself  from  the  prong  to  ease  its  misery ;  and 
presently  it  has  to  part  with  another  prong  for  the 
sake  of  comfort,  and  finally  with  a  third.  If  it 
regrows  the  prongs,  the  parasite  returns  and  the 
same  thing  is  repeated.  And  finally,  when  the 
ability  to  reproduce  prongs  is  lost  through  age,  that 
poor  old  star-fish  can't  get  around  any  more,  and  so 
it  dies  of  starvation. 


vlyV^ 


302  Following  the  Equator 

In  Australia  is  prevalent  a  horrible  disease  due  to 
an  "  unperfected  tape-worm."  Unperfected  —  that 
is  what  they  call  it,  I  do  not  know  why,  for  it  trans 
acts  business  just  as  well  as  if  it  were  finished  and 
frescoed  and  gilded,  and  all  that. 

November  9.  To  the  museum  and  public  picture 
gallery  with  the  president  of  the  Society  of  Artists. 
Some  fine  pictures  there,  lent  by  the  S.  of  A. — 
several  of  them  they  bought,  the  others  came  to  them 
by  gift.  Next,  to  the  gallery  of  the  S.  of  A. — 
annual  exhibition  —  just  opened.  Fine.  Think  of 
a  town  like  this  having  two  such  collections  as  this, 
and  a  Society  of  Artists.  It  is  so  all  over  Aus 
tralasia.  If  it  were  a  monarchy  one  might  under 
stand  it.  I  mean  an  absolute  monarchy,  where  it 
isn't  necessary  to  vote  money,  but  take  it.  Then 
art  flourishes.  But  these  colonies  are  republics  — 
republics  with  a  wide  suffrage;  voters  of  both  sexes, 
this  one  of  New  Zealand.  In  republics,  neither  the 
government  nor  the  rich  private  citizen  is  much 
given  to  propagating  art.  All  over  Australasia 
pictures  by  famous  European  artists  are  bought  for 
the  public  galleries  by  the  State  and  by  societies  of 
citizens.  Living  citizens  —  not  dead  ones.  They 
rob  themselves  to  give,  not  their  heirs.  This  S.  of 
A.  here  owns  its  building  —  built  it  by  subscription. 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

The  spirit  of  wrath  — not  the  words  — is  the  sin;  and  the  spirit  of  wrath  is 
cursing.    We  begin  to  swear  before  we  can  talk. 

—  PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

NOVEMBER  II.  On  the  road.  This  train  — 
express  —  goes  twenty  and  one-half  miles  an 
hour,  schedule  time;  but  it  is  fast  enough,  the  out 
look  upon  sea  and  land  is  so  interesting,  and  the  cars 
so  comfortable.  They  are  not  English,  and  not 
American ;  they  are  the  Swiss  combination  of  the 
two.  A  narrow  and  railed  porch  along  the  side, 
where  a  person  can  walk  up  and  down.  A  lavatory 
in  each  car.  This  is  progress;  this  is  nineteenth- 
century  spirit.  In  New  Zealand,  these  fast  expresses 
run  twice  a  week.  It  is  well  to  know  this  if  you 
want  to  be  a  bird  and  fly  through  the  country  at  a 
2O-mile  gait ;  otherwise  you  may  start  on  one  of  the 
five  wrong  days,  and  then  you  will  get  a  train  that 
can't  overtake  its  own  shadow. 

By  contrast,  these  pleasant  cars  call  to  mind  the 
branch-road  cars  at  Maryborough,  Australia,  and 
a  passenger's  talk  about  the  branch-road  and  the 
hotel. 

(303) 


304  Following  the  Equator 

Somewhere  on  the  road  to  Maryborough  I  changed 
for  a  while  to  a  smoking-carriage.  There  were  two 
gentlemen  there;  both  riding  backward,  one  at  each 
end  of  the  compartment.  They  were  acquaintances 
of  each  other.  I  sat  down  facing  the  one  that  sat  at 
the  starboard  window.  He  had  a  good  face,  and  a 
friendly  look,  and  I  judged  from  his  dress  that  he 
was  a  dissenting  minister.  He  was  along  toward 
fifty.  Of  his  own  motion  he  struck  a  match,  and 
shaded  it  with  his  hand  for  me  to  light  my  cigar.  I 
take  the  rest,  from  my  diary : 

In  order  to  start  conversation  I  asked  him  some 
thing  about  Maryborough.  He  said,  in  a  most 
pleasant  —  even  musical  —  voice,  but  with  quiet  and 
cultured  decision: 

"  It's  a  charming  town,  with  a  hell  of  a  hotel." 

I  was  astonished.  It  seemed  so  odd  to  hear  a 
minister  swear  out  loud.  He  went  placidly  on: 

44  It's  the  worst  hotel  in  Australia.  Well,  one 
may  go  further,  and  say  in  Australasia." 

"Bad  beds?" 

"  No  —  none  at  all.     Just  sand-bags." 

44  The  pillows,  too?" 

"  Yes,  the  pillows,  too.  Just  sand.  And  not  a 
good  quality  of  sand.  It  packs  too  hard,  and  has 
never  been  screened.  There  is  too  much  gravel  in  it. 
It  is  like  sleeping  on  nuts." 

"  Isn't  there  any  good  sand?  " 

"  Plenty  of  it.  There  is  as  good  bed-sand  in  thk 
region  as  the  world  can  furnish.  Aerated  sand  — 


Following  the  Equator  305 

and    loose;    but    they    won't    buy    it.       They    want 
something  that  will  pack  solid,  and  petrify." 

"  How  are  the  rooms?" 

"  Eight  feet  square;  and  a  sheet  of  iced  oil-cloth 
to  step  on  in  the  morning  when  you  get  out  of  the 
sand-quarry." 

"As  to  lights?" 

"  Coal  oil  lamp." 

"A  good  one?" 

"  No.     It's  the  kind  that  sheds  a  gloom." 

"I  like  a  lamp  that  burns  all  night." 

"This  one  won't.     You  must  blow  it  out  early." 

"That  is  bad.  One  might  want  it  again  in  the 
night.  Can't  find  it  in  the  dark." 

'There's  no  trouble;  you  can  find  it  by  the 
stench." 

"Wardrobe?" 

"Two  nails  on  the  door  to  hang  seven  suits  of 
clothes  on — if  you've  got  them." 

"Bells?" 
'  There  aren't  any." 

"What  do  you  do  when  you  want  service?" 

"  Shout.     But  it  won't  fetch  anybody." 

"  Suppose  you  want  the  chambermaid  to  empty 
the  slop-jar?  " 

'  There  isn't  any  slop-jar.  The  hotels  don't 
keep  them.  That  is,  outside  of  Sydney  and  Mel 
bourne." 

*  Yes,  I  knew  that.     I  was  only  talking.     It's  the 
oddest   thing   in    Australia.      Another    thing:      I've 
20* 


306  Following  the  Equator 

got  to  get  up  in  the  dark,  in  the  morning,  to  take 
the  5  o'clock  train.  Now  if  the  boots — " 

"There  isn't  any." 

"Well,  the  porter." 

"There  isn't  any/' 

"  But  who  will  call  me?  " 

"Nobody.  You'll  call  yourself.  And  you'll 
light  yourself,  too.  There'll  not  be  a  light  burning 
in  the  halls  or  anywhere.  And  if  you  don't  carry  a 
light,  you'll  break  your  neck." 

"  But  who  will  help  me  down  with  my  baggage?  " 

"  Nobody.  However,  I  will  tell  you  what  to  do. 
In  Maryborough  there's  an  American  who  has  lived 
there  half  a  lifetime;  a  fine  man,  and  prosperous 
and  popular.  He  will  be  on  the  lookout  for  you ; 
you  won't  have  any  trouble.  Sleep  in  peace;  he 
will  rout  you  out,  and  you  will  make  your  train. 
Where  is  your  manager?" 

"  I  left  him  at  Ballarat,  studying  the  language. 
And  besides,  he  had  to  go  to  Melbourne  and  get  us 
ready  for  New  Zealand.  I've  not  tried  to  pilot  my 
self  before,  and  it  doesn't  look  easy." 

"  Easy !  You've  selected  the  very  most  difficult 
piece  of  railroad  in  Australia  for  your  experiment. 
There  are  twelve  'miles  of  this  road  which  no  man 
without  good  executive  ability  can  ever  hope  —  tell 
me,  have  you  good  executive  ability  ?  —  first-rate  ex 
ecutive  ability?  " 

"I  —  well,  I  think  so,  but — " 

"  That  settles  it.     The  tone  of —  oh,  you  wouldn't 


Following  the  Equator  307 

ever  make  it  in  the  world.  However,  that  American 
will  point  you  right,  and  you'll  go.  You've  got 
tickets?'1 

"  Yes  —  round  trip;  all  the  way  to  Sydney." 

"Ah,  there  it  is,  you  see!  You  are  going  in  the 
5  o'clock  by  Castlemaine  —  twelve  miles  —  instead 
of  the  7.15  by  Ballarat  —  in  order  to  save  two  hours 
of  fooling  along  the  road.  Now  then,  don't  inter 
rupt —  let  me  have  the  floor.  You're  going  to  save 
the  Government  a  deal  of  hauling,  but  that's  nothing; 
your  ticket  is  by  Ballarat,  and  it  isn't  good  over  that 
twelve  miles,  and  so  —  " 

"  But  why  should  the  Government  care  which  way 
I  go?" 

"  Goodness  knows !  Ask  of  the  winds  that  far 
away  with  fragments  strewed  the  sea,  as  the  boy  that 
stood  on  the  burning  deck  used  to  say.  The  Govern 
ment  chooses  to  do  its  railway  business  in  its  own 
way,  and  it  doesn't  know  as  much  about  it  as  the 
French.  In  the  beginning  they  tried  idiots;  then 
they  imported  the  French  —  which  was  going  back 
wards,  you  see;  now  it  runs  the  roads  itself  —  which 
is  going  backwards  again,  you  see.  Why,  do  you 
know,  in  order  to  curry  favor  with  the  voters,  the 
Government  puts  down  a  road  wherever  anybody 
wants  it  —  anybody  that  owns  two  sheep  and  a  dog; 
and  by  consequence  we've  got,  in  the  colony  of  Vic 
toria,  800  railway  stations,  and  the  business  done  at 
eighty  of  them  doesn't  foot  up  twenty  shillings  a 
week." 

T* 


308  Following  the  Equator 

"Five  dollars?     Oh,  come!  " 
"  It's  true.     It's  the  absolute  truth." 
"Why,  there  are  three  or  four  men  on  wages  at 
every  station." 

"I  know  it.  And  the  station-business  doesn't 
pay  for  the  sheep-dip  to  sanctify  their  coffee  with. 
It's  just  as  I  say.  And  accommodating?  Why,  if 
you  shake  a  rag  the  train  will  stop  in  the  midst  of 
the  wilderness  to  pick  you  up.  All  that  kind  of 
politics  costs,  you  see.  And  then,  besides,  any 
town  that  has  a  good  many  votes  and  wants  a  fine 
station,  gets  it.  Don't  you  overlook  that  Mary 
borough  station,  if  you  take  an  interest  in  govern 
mental  curiosities.  Why,  you  can  put  the  whole 
population  of  Maryborough  into  it,  and  give  them  a 
sofa  apiece,  and  have  room  for  more.  You  haven't 
fifteen  stations  in  America  that  are  as  big,  and  you 
probably  haven't  five  that  are  half  as  fine.  Why, 
it's  per-fectly  elegant.  And  the  clock!  Everybody 
will  show  you  the  clock.  There  isn't  a  station  in 
Europe  that's  got  such  a  clock.  It  doesn't  strike  — 
and  that's  one  mercy.  It  hasn't  any  bell;  and  as 
you'll  have  cause  to  remember,  if  you  keep  your 
reason,  all  Australia  is  simply  bedamned  with  bells. 
On  every  quarter-hour,  night  and  day,  they  jingle 
a  tiresome  chime  of  half  a  dozen  notes  —  all  the 
clocks  in  town  at  once,  all  the  clocks  in  Australasia 
at  once,  and  all  the  very  same  notes;  first,  down 
ward  scale  :  mi,  re,  do,  sol —  then  upward  scale  :  sol, 
si,  re,  do  —  down  again:  mi»  re*  do>  sot— up  again: 


Following  the  Equator  309 

sol,  si,  re,  do  —  then  the  clock — say  at  midnight: 
clang —  clang —  clang  —  clang  —  clang  —  clang  — 
clang  —  clang  —  clang  —  clang  —  clang  —  clang  ! 
' — and,  by  that  time  you're  —  hello,  what's  all  this 
excitement  about  ?  Oh,  I  see  —  a  runaway  —  scared 
by  the  train;  why,  you  wouldn't  think  this  train 
could  scare  anything.  Well,  of  course,  when  they 
build  and  run  eighty  stations  at  a  loss,  and  a  lot  of 
palace-stations  and  clocks  like  Maryborough's  at 
another  loss,  the  Government  has  got  to  economize 
somewhere,  hasn't  it?  Very  well  —  look  at  the  roll 
ing  stock !  That's  where  they  save  the  money. 
Why,  that  train  from  Maryborough  will  consist  of 
eighteen  freight  cars  and  two  passenger-kennels; 
cheap,  poor,  shabby,  slovenly;  no  drinking  water, 
no  sanitary  arrangements,  every  imaginable  incon 
venience  ;  and  slow? — •  oh,  the  gait  of  cold  molasses ; 
no  air-brake,  no  springs,  and  they'll  jolt  your  head 
off  every  time  they  start  or  stop.  That's  where  they 
make  their  little  economies,  you  see.  They  spend 
tons  of  money  to  house  you  palatially  while  you  wait 
fifteen  minutes  for  a  train,  then  degrade  you  to  six 
hours'  convict-transportation  to  get  the  foolish  out 
lay  back.  What  a  rational  man  really  needs  is  dis 
comfort  while  he's  waiting,  then  his  journey  in  a  nice 
train  would  be  a  grateful  change.  But  no,  that 
would  be  common  sense  —  and  out  of  place 
in  a  government.  And  then,  besides,  they  save 
in  that  other  little  detail,  you  know  —  repudiate 
their  own  tickets,  and  collect  a  poor  little  ille- 


310  Following  the  Equator 

gitimate  extra  shilling  out  of  you  for  that  twelve 
miles,  and — " 

"Well,  in  any  case— " 

41  Wait  —  there's  more.  Leave  that  American  out 
of  the  account  and  see  what  would  happen.  There's 
nobody  on  hand  to  examine  your  ticket  when  you 
arrive.  But  the  conductor  will  come  and  examine  it 
when  the  train  is  ready  to  start.  It  is  too  late  to  buy 
your  extra  ticket  now;  the  train  can't  wait,  and 
won't.  You  must  climb  out." 

"  But  can't  I  pay  the  conductor?  " 

"  No,  he  is  not  authorized  to  receive  the  money, 
and  he  won't.  You  must  climb  out.  There's  no 
other  way.  I  tell  you,  the  railway  management  is 
about  the  only  thoroughly  European  thing  here  — 
continentally  European  I  mean,  not  English.  It's 
the  continental  business  in  perfection;  down  fine. 
Oh,  yes,  even  to  the  peanut-commerce  of  weighing 
baggage." 

The  train  slowed  up  at  his  place.  As  he  stepped 
out  he  said : 

"  Yes,  you'll  like  Maryborough.  Plenty  of  intel 
ligence  there.  It's  a  charming  place  —  with  a  hell 
of  a  hotel." 

Then  he  was  gone.  I  turned  to  the  other  gentle 
man: 

"  Is  your  friend  in  the  ministry?  " 

"No  — studying  for  it." 


CHAPTER   XXXII. 

The  man  with  a  new  idea  is  a  Crank  until  the  idea  succeeds. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

IT  was  Junior  England  all  the  way  to  Christchurch 
—  in  fact,,  just  a  garden.  And  Christchurch  is 
an  English  town,  with  an  English-park  annex,  and  a 
winding  English  brook  just  like  the  Avon  —  and 
named  the  Avon ;  but  from  a  man,  not  from  Shake 
speare's  river.  Its  grassy  banks  are  bordered  by  the 
stateliest  and  most  impressive  weeping  willows  to  be 
found  in  the  world,  I  suppose.  They  continue  the 
line  of  a  great  ancestor;  they  were  grown  from 
sprouts  of  the  willow  that  sheltered  Napoleon's  grave 
in  St.  Helena.  It  is  a  settled  old  community,  with 
all  the  serenities,  the  graces,  the  conveniences,  and 
the  comforts  of  the  ideal  home-life.  If  it  had  an 
established  Church  and  social  inequality  it  would  be 
England  over  again  with  hardly  a  lack. 

In  the  museum  we  saw  many  curious  and  interest 
ing  things;  among  others  a  fine  native  house  of  the 
olden  time,  with  all  the  details  true  to  the  facts,  and 
the  showy  colors  right  and  in  their  proper  places. 
All  the  details :  the  fine  mats  and  rugs  and  things ; 

(311) 


312  Following  the  Equator 

the  elaborate  and  wonderful  wood  carvings  —  wonder 
ful,  surely,  considering  who  did  them  —  wonderful 
in  design  and  particularly  in  execution,  for  they 
were  done  with  admirable  sharpness  and  exactness, 
and  yet  with  no  better  tools  than  flint  and  jade  and 
shell  could  furnish ;  and  the  totem-posts  were  there, 
ancestor  above  ancestor,  with  tongues  protruded  and 
hands  clasped  comfortably  over  bellies  containing 
other  people's  ancestors  —  grotesque  and  ugly  devils, 
everyone,  but  lovingly  carved,  and  ably;  and  the 
stuffed  natives  were  present,  in  their  proper  places, 
and  looking  as  natural  as  life ;  and  the  housekeeping 
utensils  were  there,  too,  and  close  at  hand  the  carved 
and  finely  ornamented  war-canoe. 

And  we  saw  little  jade  gods,  to  hang  around  the 
neck  —  not  everybody's,  but  sacred  to  the  necks  of 
natives  of  rank.  Also  jade  weapons,  and  many 
kinds  of  jade  trinkets  —  all  made  out  of  that  exces 
sively  hard  stone  without  the  help  of  any  tool  of  iron. 
And  some  of  these  things  had  small  round  holes 
bored  through  them  —  nobody  knows  how  it  was 
done;  a  mystery,  a  lost  art.  I  think  it  was  said 
that  if  you  want  such  a  hole  bored  in  a  piece  of 
jade  now,  you  must  send  it  to  London  or  Amsterdam 
where  the  lapidaries  are. 

Also  we  saw  a  complete  skeleton  of  the  giant  Moa. 
It  stood  ten  feet  high,  and  must  have  been  a  sight  to 
look  at  when  it  was  a  living  bird.  It  was  a  kicker, 
like  the  ostrich ;  in  fight  it  did  not  use  its  beak,  but 
its  foot.  It  must  have  been  a  convincing  kind  of 


Following  the  Equator  313 

kick.  If  a  person  had  his  back  to  the  bird  and  did 
not  see  who  it  was  that  did  it,  he  would  think  he  had 
been  kicked  by  a  wind-mill. 

There  must  have  been  a  sufficiency  of  moas  in  the 
old  forgotten  days  when  his  breed  walked  the  earth. 
His  bones  are  found  in  vast  masses,  all  crammed 
together  in  huge  graves.  They  are  not  in  caves, 
but  in  the  ground.  Nobody  knows  how  they  hap 
pened  to  get  concentrated  there.  Mind,  they  are 
bones,  not  fossils.  This  means  that  the  moa  has  not 
been  extinct  very  long.  Still,  this  is  the  only  New 
Zealand  creature  which  has  no  mention  in  that  other 
wise  comprehensive  literature,  the  native  legends. 
This  is  a  significant  detail,  and  is  good  circum 
stantial  evidence  that  the  moa  has  been  extinct  500 
years,  since  the  Maori  has  himself  —  by  tradition  — 
been  in  New  Zealand  since  the  end  of  the  fifteenth 
century.  He  came  from  an  unknown  land  —  the  first 
Maori  did  —  then  sailed  back  in  a  canoe  and  brought 
his  tribe,  and  they  removed  the  aboriginal  peoples  into 
the  sea  and  into  the  ground  and  took  the  land.  That 
is  the  tradition.  That  that  first  Maori  could  come  is 
understandable,  for  anybody  can  come  to  a  place 
when  he  isn't  trying  to;  but  how  that  discoverer 
found  his  way  back  home  again  without  a  compass 
is  his  secret,  and  he  died  with  it  in  him.  His 
language  indicates  that  he  came  from  Polynesia. 
He  told  where  he  came  from,  but  he  couldn't  spell 
well,  so  one  can't  find  the  place  on  the  map,  be 
cause  people  who  could  spell  better  than  he  could 


314  Following  the  Equator 

spelt  the  resemblance  all  out  of  it  when  they  made 
the  map.  However,  it  is  better  to  have  a  map  that 
is  spelt  right  than  one  that  has  information  in  it. 

In  New  Zealand  women  have  the  right  to  vote  for 
members  of  the  legislature,  but  they  cannot  be  mem 
bers  themselves.  The  law  extending  the  suffrage  to 
them  went  into  effect  in  1893.  The  population  of 
Christchurch  (census  of  1891)  was  31,454.  The 
first  election  under  the  law  was  held  in  November  of 
that  year.  Number  of  men  who  voted,  6,313; 
number  of  women  who  voted,  5,989.  These  figures 
ought  to  convince  us  that  women  are  not  as  indiffer 
ent  about  politics  as  some  people  would  have  us  be 
lieve.  In  New  Zealand  as  a  whole,  the  estimated 
adult  female  population  was  139,915;  of  those 
109,461  qualified  and  registered  their  names  on  the 
rolls  —  78.23  per  cent,  of  the  whole.  Of  these, 
90,290  went  to  the  polls  and  voted  —  85.18  per 
cent.  Do  men  ever  turn  out  better  than  that  —  in 
America  or  elsewhere?  Here  is  a  remark  to  the 
other  sex's  credit,  too — I  take  it  from  the  official 
report : 

"A  feature  of  the  election  was  the  orderliness  and 
sobriety  of  the  people.  Women  were  in  no  way 
molested." 

Ac  home,  a  standing  argument  against  woman 
suffrage  has  always  been  that  women  could  not  go  to 
the  polls  without  being  insulted.  The  arguments 
against  woman  suffrage  have  always  taken  the  easy 
form  of  prophecy.  The  prophets  have  been 


Following  the  Equator  315 

prophesying  ever  since  the  woman's  rights  movement 
began  in  1848  —  and  in  forty-seven  years  they  have 
never  scored  a  hit. 

Men  ought  to  begin  to  feel  a  sort  of  respect  for 
their  mothers  and  wives  and  sisters  by  this  time. 
The  women  deserve  a  change  of  attitude  like  that, 
for  they  have  wrought  well.  In  forty-seven  years 
they  have  swept  an  imposingly  large  number  of 
unfair  laws  from  the  statute  books  of  America.  In 
that  brief  time  these  serfs  have  set  themselves  free 
— -  essentially.  Men  could  not  have  done  so  much 
for  themselves  in  that  time  without  bloodshed  —  at 
least  they  never  have;  and  that  is  aigument  that 
they  didn't  know  how.  The  women  have  accom 
plished  a  peaceful  revolution,  and  a  very  beneficent 
one;  and  yet  that  has  not  convinced  the  average 
man  that  they  are  intelligent,  and  have  courage  and 
energy  and  perseverance  and  fortitude.  It  takes 
much  to  convince  the  average  man  of  anything;  and 
perhaps  nothing  can  ever  make  him  realize  that  he 
is  the  average  woman's  inferior  —  yet  in  several  im 
portant  details  the  evidence  seems  to  show  that  that  is 
what  he  is.  Man  has  ruled  the  human  race  from  the 
beginning  —  but  he  should  remember  that  up  to  the 
middle  of  the  present  century  it  was  a  dull  world, 
and  ignorant  and  stupid ;  but  it  is  not  such  a  dull 
world  now,  and  is  growing  less  and  less  dull  all  the 
time.  This  is  woman's  opportunity  —  she  has  had 
none  before.  I  wonder  where  man  will  be  in  another 
forty-seven  years? 


316  Following  the  Equator 

In  the  New  Zealand  law  occurs  this:  "  The  word 
person  wherever  it  occurs  throughout  the  Act  in 
cludes  woman." 

That  is  promotion,  you  see.  By  that  enlarge 
ment  of  the  word,  the  matron  with  the  garnered 
wisdom  and  experience  of  fifty  years  becomes  at  one 
jump  the  political  equal  of  her  callow  kid  of  twenty- 
one.  The  white  population  of  the  colony  is  626,000, 

irtT'    ^V 

the  Maori  population  is  42,000.  The  whites  elect 
seventy  members  of  the  House  of  Representatives, 
the  Maoris  four.  The  Maori  women  vote  for  their 
four  members. 

November  16.  After  four  pleasant  days  in  Christ- 
church,  we  are  to  leave  at  midnight  to-night.  Mr. 
Kinsey  gave  me  an  ornithorhyncus,  and  I  am  tam 
ing  it. 

Sunday,  77.  Sailed  last  night  in  the  Flora, 
from  Lyttelton. 

So  we  did.  I  remember  it  yet.  The  people  who 
sailed  in  the  Flora  that  night  may  forget  some  other 
things  if  they  live  a  good  while,  but  they  will  not  live 
long  enough  to  forget  that.  The  Flora  is  about  the 
equivalent  of  a  cattle-scow;  but  when  the  Union 
Company  find  it  inconvenient  to  keep  a  contract  and 
lucrative  to  break  it,  they  smuggle  her  into  passenger 
service,  and  "  keep  the  change." 

They  give  no  notice  of  their  projected  depredation  ; 
you  innocently  buy  tickets  for  the  advertised  passen 
ger-boat,  and  when  you  get  down  to  Lyttelton  at 
midnight,  you  find  that  they  have  substituted  the 


Following  the  Equator  317 

scow.  They  have  plenty  of  good  boats,  but  no  com 
petition  —  and  that  is  the  trouble.  It  is  too  late  now 
to  make  other  arrangements  if  you  have  engage 
ments  ahead. 

It  is  a  powerful  company,  it  has  a  monopoly,  and 
everybody  is  afraid  of  it  —  including  the  govern 
ment's  representative,  who  stands  at  the  end  of  the 
stage-plank  to  tally  the  passengers  and  see  that  no 
boat  receives  a  greater  number  than  the  law  allows 
her  to  carry.  This  conveniently-blind  representative 
saw  the  scow  receive,  a  number  which  was  far  in 
excess  of  its  privilege,  and  winked  a  politic  wink  and 
said  nothing.  The  passengers  bore  with  meekness 
the  cheat  which  had  been  put  upon  them,  and  made 
no  complaint. 

It  was  like  being  at  home  in  America,  where 
abused  passengers  act  in  just  the  same  way.  A  few 
days  before,  the  Union  Company  had  discharged  a 
captain  for  getting  a  boat  into  danger,  and  had 
advertised  this  act  as  evidence  of  its  vigilance  in 
looking  after  the  safety  of  the  passengers  —  for  thug- 
ging  a  captain  costs  a  company  nothing;  but  when 
opportunity  offered  to  send  this  dangerously  over 
crowded  tub  to  sea  and  save  a  little  trouble  and  a  tidy 
penny  by  it,  it  forgot  to  worry  about  the  passen 
gers'  safety. 

The  first  officer  told  me  that  the  Flora  was 
privileged  to  carry  125  passengers.  She  must  have 
had  all  of  200  on  board.  All  the  cabins  were  full, 
all  the  cattle-stalls  in  the  main  stable  were  full,  the 


ar 


(A 

318  Following  the  Equator 

spaces  at  the  heads  of  companionways  were  full, 
every  inch  of  floor  and  table  in  the  swill-room  was 
packed  with  sleeping  men  and  remained  so  until  the 
place  was  required  for  breakfast,  all  the  chairs  and 
benches  on  the  hurricane  deck  were  occupied,  and  still 
there  were  people  who  had  to  walk  about  all  night ! 

If  the  Flora  had  gone  down  that  night,  half  of  the 
people  on  board  would  have  been  wholly  without 
means  of  escape. 

The  owners  of  that  boat  were  not  technically  guilty 
of  conspiracy  to  commit  murder,  but  they  were 
morally  guilty  of  it. 

I  had  a  cattle-stall  in  the  main  stable  —  a  cavern 
fitted  up  with  a  long  double  file  of  two-storied  bunks, 
the  files  separated  by  a  calico  partition  —  twenty  men 
and  boys  on  one  side  of  it,  twenty  women  and  girls 
on  the  other.  The  place  was  as  dark  as  the  soul  of 
the  Union  Company,  and  smelt  like  a  kennel.  When 
the  vessel  got  out  into  the  heavy  seas  and  began  to 
pitch  and  wallow,  the  cavern  prisoners  became  im 
mediately  seasick,  and  then  the  peculiar  results  that 
ensued  laid  all  my  previous  experiences  of  the  kind 
well  away  in  the  shade.  And  the  wails,  the  groans, 
the  cries,  the  shrieks,  the  strange  ejaculations — it 
was  wonderful. 

The  women  and  children  and  some  of  the  men  and 
boys  spent  the  night  in  that  place,  for  they  were  too 
ill  to  leave  it;  but  the  rest  of  us  got  up,  by  and  by, 
and  finished  the  night  on  the  hurricane  deck. 

That  boat  was  the  foulest  I  was  ever  in ;  and  the 


Following  the  Equator  319 

smell  of  the  breakfast  saloon  when  we  threaded  our 
way  among  the  layers  of  steaming  passengers 
stretched  upon  its  floor  and  its  tables  was  incom 
parable  for  efficiency. 

A  good  many  of  us  got  ashore  at  the  first  way-port 
to  seek  another  ship.  After  a  wait  of  three  hours 
we  got  good  rooms  in  the  Mahinapua>  a  wee  little 
bridal-parlor  of  a  boat — only  205  tons  burthen; 
clean  and  comfortable ;  good  service ;  good  beds ; 
good  table,  and  no  crowding.  The  seas  danced  her 
about  like  a  duck,  but  she  was  safe  and  capable. 

Next  morning  early  she  went  through  the  French 
Pass  —  a  narrow  gateway  of  rock,  between  bold  head 
lands — -so  narrow,  in  fact,  that  it  seemed  no  wider 
than  a  street.  The  current  tore  through  there  like 
a  mill-race,  and  the  boat  darted  through  like  a  tele 
gram.  The  passage  was  made  in  half  a  minute; 
then  we  were  in  a  wide  place  where  noble  vast  eddies 
swept  grandly  round  and  round  in  shoal  water,  and 
I  wondered  what  they  would  do  with  the  little  boat. 
They  did  as  they  pleased  with  her.  They  picked 
her  up  and  flung  her  around  like  nothing  and  landed 
her  gently  on  the  solid,  smooth  bottom  of  sand  —  so 
gently,  indeed,  that  we  barely  felt  her  touch  it,  barely 
felt  her  quiver  when  she  came  to  a  standstill.  The 
water  was  as  clear  as  glass,  the  sand  on  the  bottom 
was  vividly  distinct,  and  the  fishes  seemed  to  be 
swimming  about  in  nothing.  Fishing  lines  were 
brought  out,  but  before  we  could  bait  the  hooks  thq 
boat  was  off  and  away  again. 


JH 


CHAPTER   XXXIII. 

Let  us  be  grateful  to  Adam  our  benefactor.    He  cut  us  out  of  the  "bless, 
ing  "  of  idleness  and  won  for  us  the  "  curse  "  of  labor. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WE  soon  reached  the  town  of  Nelson,  and  spent 
the  most  of  the  day  there,  visiting  acquaint- 
ances  and  driving  with  them  about  the  garden  —  the 
whole  region  is  a  garden,  excepting  the  scene  of  the 
"  Maungatapu  Murders,"  of  thirty  years  ago.  That 
is  a  wild  place — wild  and  lonely;  an  ideal  place  for 
a  murder.  It  is  at  the  base  of  a  vast,  rugged, 
densely  timbered  mountain-  In  the  deep  twilight  of 
that  forest  solitude  four  desperate  rascals  —  Burgess, 
Sullivarr,  Levy,  and  Kelley  —  ambushed  themselves 
beside  the  mountain  trail  to  murder  and  rob  four 
travelers  —  Kempthorne,  Mathieu,  Dudley,  and  De 
Pontius,  the  latter  a  New  Yorker.  A  harmless  old 
laboring  man  came  wandering  along,  and,  as  his 
presence  was  an  embarrassment,  they  choked  him,  hid 
him,  and  then  resumed  their  watch  for  the  four. 
They  had  to  wait  a  while,  but  eventually  everything 
turned  out  as  they  desired. 

That   dark   episode   is   the   one  large  event  in  the 
history  of  Nelson.     The   fame   of    it   traveled    far. 

(320) 


*wW-'£f 

Following  the  Equator  321 

Burgess  made  a  confession.  It  is  a  remarkable 
paper.  For  brevity,  succinctness,  and  concentra 
tion,  it  is  perhaps  without  its  peer  in  the  literature  of 
murder.  There  are  no  waste  words  in  it;  there  is  no 
obtTusion  of  matter  not  pertinent  to  the  occasion, 
nor  any  departure  from  the  dispassionate  tone  proper 
to  a  formal  business  statement  —  for  that  is  what  it 
is :  a  business  statement  of  a  murder,  by  the  chief 
engineer  of  it,  or  superintendent,  or  foreman,  or 
whatever  one  may  prefer  to  call  him. 

"  We  were  getting  impatient,  when  we  saw  four  men  and  a  pack- 
horse  coming.  I  left  my  cover  and  had  a  look  at  the  men,  for  Levy  had 
told  me  that  Mathieu  was  a  small  man  and  wore  a  large  beard,  and  that 
it  was  a  chestnut  horse.  I  said,  '  Here  they  come.'  They  were  then  a 
good  distance  away;  I  took  the  caps  off  my  gun,  and  put  fresh  ones  on. 
I  said,  *  You  keep  where  you  are,  I'll  put  them  up,  and  you  give  me 
your  gun  while  you  tie  them.'  It  was  arranged  as  I  have  described. 
The  men  came;  they  arrived  within  about  fifteen  yards,  when  I  stepped 
up  and  said,  'Stand!  bail  up!"  That  means  all  of  them  to  get  to 
gether.  I  made  them  fall  back  on  the  upper  side  of  the  road  with  their 
faces  up  the  range,  and  Sullivan  brought  me  his  gun,  and  then  tied  their 
hands  behind  them.  The  horse  was  very  quiet  all  the  time,  he  did  not 
move.  When  they  were  all  tied,  Sullivan  took  the  horse  up  the  hill, 
and  put  him  in  the  bush;  he  cut  the  rope  and  let  the  swags*  fall  on  the 
ground,  and  then  came  to  me.  We  then  marched  the  men  down  the 
incline  to  the  creek;  the  water  at  this  time  barely  running.  Up  this 
creek  we  took  the  men;  we  went,  I  daresay,  five  or  six  hundred  yards 
up  it,  which  took  us  nearly  half  an  hour  to  accomplish.  Then  we  turned 
to  'the  right  up  the  range;  we  went,  I  daresay,  one  hundred  and  fifty 
yards  from  the  creek,  and  there  we  sat  down  with  the  men.  I  said  to 
Sullivan,  *  Put  down  your  gun  and  search  these  men,'  which  he  did.  I 
asked  them  their  several  names;  they  told  me.  I  asked  them  if  they 
were  expected  at  Nelson.  They  said,  'No.'  If  such  their  lives  would 
have  been  spared.  In  money  we  took  ^60  odd.  I  said,  'Is  this  all  you 

*  A  "  swag  "  is  a  kit.  a  r>ack,  small  baggage. 
21* 


322  Following  the  Equator 

have?  You  had  better  tell  me.'  Sullivan  said,  '  Here  is  a  bag  of  gold.1 
I  said,  '  What's  on  that  pack-horse?  Is  there  any  gold? '  when  Kemp- 
thorne  said,  '  Yes,  my  gold  is  in  the  portmanteau,  and  I  trust  you  will 
not  take  it  all.'  « Well,'  I  said,  « we  must  take  you  away  one  at  a  time, 
because  the  range  is  steep  just  here,  and  then  we  will  let  you  go.'  They 
said,  'All  right,'  most  cheerfully.  We  tied  their  feet,  and  took  Dudley 
with  us;  we  went  about  sixty  yards  with  him.  This  was  through  a 
scrub.  It  was  arranged  the  night  previously  that  it  would  be  best  to 
choke  them,  in  case  the  report  of  the  arms  might  be  heard  from  the 
road,  and  if  they  were  missed  they  never  would  be  found.  So  we  tied 
a  handkerchief  over  his  eyes,  when  Sullivan  took  the  sash  off  his  waist, 
put  it  round  his  neck,  and  so  strangled  him.  Sullivan,  after  I  had  killed 
the  old  laboring  man,  found  fault  with  the  way  he  was  choked.  He  said, 
'The  next  vie  do  I'll  show  you  my  way.'  I  said,  '  I  have  never  done 
such  a  thing  before.  I  have  shot  a  man,  but  never  choked  one.'  We 
returned  to  the  others,  when  Kempthorne  said,  '  What  noise  was  that? ' 
I  said  it  was  caused  by  breaking  through  the  scrub.  This  was  taking 
too  much  time,  so  it  was  agreed  to  shoot  them.  With  that  I  said, 
'  We'll  take  you  no  further,  but  separate  you,  and  then  loose  one  of  you, 
and  he  can  relieve  the  others.'  So  with  that,  Sullivan  took  De  Pontius 
to  the  left  of  where  Kempthorne  was  sitting.  I  took  Mathieu  to  the  right. 
I  tied  a  strap  round  his  legs,  and  shot  him  with  a  revolver.  He  yelled, 
I  ran  from  him  with  my  gun  in  my  hand,  I  sighted  Kempthorne,  who 
had  risen  to  his  feet.  I  presented  the  gun,  and  shot  him  behind  the 
right  ear;  his  life's  blood  welled  from  him,  and  he  died  instantaneously. 
Sullivan  had  shot  De  Pontius  in  the  meantime,  and  then  came  to  me.  I 
said,  '  Look  to  Mathieu,'  indicating  the  spot  where  he  lay.  He  shortly 
returned  and  said,  'I  had  to  "  chiv  "  that  fellow,  he  was  not  dead,'  a 
cant  word,  meaning  that  he  had  to  stab  him.  Returning  to  the  road 
we  passed  where  De  Pontius  lay  and  was  dead.  Sullivan  said,  '  This  is 
the  digger,  the  others  were  all  storekeepers;  this  is  the  digger,  let's  cover 
him  up,  for  should  the  others  be  found,  they'll  think  he  done  it  and 
sloped,'  meaning  he  had  gone.  So  with  that  we  threw  all  the  stones 
on  him,  and  then  left  him.  This  bloody  work  took  nearly  an  hour  and 
a  half  from  the  time  we  stopped  the  men." 

Any  one  who  reads  that  confession  will  think  that 
the  man  who  wrote  it  was  destitute  of  emotions, 
destitute  of  feeling.  That  is  partly  true.  As 


Following  the  Equator  323 

regarded  others  he  was  plainly  without  feeling  — 
utterly  cold  and  pitiless ;  but  as  regarded  himself  the 
case  was  different  While  he  cared  nothing  for  the 
future  of  the  murdered  men,  he  cared  a  great  deal 
for  his  own.  It  makes  one's  flesh  creep  to  read  the 
introduction  to  his  confession.  The  judge  on  the 
bench  characterized  it  as  "  scandalously  blasphe 
mous,"  and  it  certainly  reads  so,  but  Burgess  meant 
no  blasphemy.  He  was  merely  a  brute,  and  what 
ever  he  said  or  wrote  was  sure  to  expose  the  fact. 
His  redemption  was  a  very  real  thing  to  him,  and 
he  was  as  jubilantly  happy  on  the  gallows  as  ever 
was  Christian  martyr  at  the  stake.  We  dwellers  in 
this  world  are  strangely  made,  and  mysteriously 
circumstanced.  We  have  to  suppose  that  the 
murdered  men  are  lost,  and  that  Burgess  is  saved; 
but  we  cannot  suppress  our  natural  regrets : 

"  Written  in  my  dungeon  drear  this  7th  of  August,  in  the  year  of 
Grace,  1866.  To  God  be  ascribed  all  power  and  glory  in  subduing  the 
rebellious  spirit  of  a  most  guilty  wretch,  who  has  been  brought,  through 
the  instrumentality  of  a  faithful  follower  of  Christ,  to  see  his  wretched 
and  guilty  state,  inasmuch  as  hitherto  he  has  led  an  awful  and  wretched 
life,  and  through  the  assurance  of  this  faithful  soldier  of  Christ,  he  has 
been  led  and  also  believes  that  Christ  will  yet  receive  and  cleanse  him 
from  all  his  deep-dyed  and  bloody  sins.  I  lie  under  the  imputation 
which  says, '  Come  now  and  let  us  reason  together,  saith  the  Lord ; 
though  your  sins  be  as  scarlet,  they  shall  be  as  white  as  snow;  though 
they  be  red  like  crimson,  they  shall  be  as  wool.'  On  tnis  promise  I  rely." 

We  sailed  in  the  afternoon  late,  spent  a  few  hours 
at    New   Plymouth,   then   sailed  again   and   reached 
Auckland   the   next  day,   November  2Oth,   and   re 
mained  in  that  fine  city  several  days.     Its  situation 
u* 


324  Following  the  Equator 

is  commanding,  and  the  sea  view  is  superb.  There 
are  charming  drives  all  about,  and  by  courtesy  of 
friends  we  had  opportunity  to  enjoy  them.  From 
the  grassy  crater-summit  of  Mount  Eden  one's  eye 
ranges  over  a  grand  sweep  and  variety  of  scenery 
—  forests  clothed  in  luxuriant  foliage,  rolling  green 
fields,  conflagrations  of  flowers,  receding  and  dim 
ming  stretches  of  green  plain,  broken  by  lofty  and 
symmetrical  old  craters  —  then  the  blue  bays  twink 
ling  and  sparkling  away  into  the  dreamy  distances 
where  the  mountains  loom  spiritual  in  their  veils 
of  haze. 

It  is  from  Auckland  that  one  goes  to  Rotorua,  the 
region  of  the  renowned  hot  lakes  and  geysers  —  one 
of  the  chief  wonders  of  New  Zealand ;  but  I  was  not 
well  enough  to  make  the  trip.  The  Government  has 
a  sanitarium  there,  and  everything  is  comfortable 
for  the  tourist  and  the  invalid.  The  Government's 
official  physician  is  almost  over-cautious  in  his 
estimates  of  the  efficacy  of  the  baths,  when  he  is 
talking  about  rheumatism,  gout,  paralysis,  and  such 
things ;  but  when  he  is  talking  about  the  effective 
ness  of  the  waters  in  eradicating  the  whisky-habit,  he 
seems  to  have  no  reserves.  The  baths  will  cure  the 
drinking-habit  no  matter  how  chronic  it  is— and 
cure  it  so  effectually  that  even  the  desire  to  drink 
intoxicants  will  come  no  more.  There  should  be  a 
rush  from  Europe  and  America  to  that  place ;  and 
when  the  victims  of  alcoholism  find  out  what  they 
can  get  by  going  there,  the  rush  will  begin. 


Following  the  Equator  325 

The  Thermal-springs  District  of  New  Zealand 
comprises  an  area  of  upward  of  600,000  acres,  or 
close  on  1 ,000  square  miles.  Rotorua  is  the  favorite 
place.  It  is  the  center  of  a  rich  field  of  lake  and 
mountain  scenery;  from  Rotorua  as  a  base  the 
pleasure- seeker  makes  excursions.  The  crowd  of 
sick  people  is  great,  and  growing.  Rotorua  is  the 
Carlsbad  of  Australasia. 

It  is  from  Auckland  that  the  Kauri  gum  is 
shipped.  For  a  long  time  now  about  8,000  tons  of 
it  have  been  brought  into  the  town  per  year.  It  is 
worth  about  $300  per  ton,  unassorted;  assorted, 
the  finest  grades  are  worth  about  $1,000.  It  goes 
to  America,  chiefly.  It  is  in  lumps,  and  is  hard 
and  smooth,  and  looks  like  amber  —  the  light  col 
ored  like  new  amber,  and  the  dark  brown  like  rich 
old  amber.  And  it  has  the  pleasant  feel  of  amber, 
too.  Some  of  the  light-colored  samples  were  a  tol 
erably  fair  counterfeit  of  uncut  South  African  dia 
monds,  they  were  so  perfectly  smooth  and  polished 
and  transparent.  It  is  manufactured  into  varnish; 
a  varnish  which  answers  for  copal  varnish  and  is 
cheaper. 

The  gum  is  dug  up  out  of  the  ground;  it  has 
been  there  for  ages.  It  is  the  sap  of  the  Kauri 
tree.  Dr.  Campbell  of  Auckland  told  me  he  sent  a 
cargo  of  it  to  England  fifty  years  ago,  but  nothing 
came  of  the  venture.  Nobody  knew  what  to  do 
with  it;  so  it  was  sold  at  £$  a  ton,  to  light  fires 
With. 


326  Following  the  Equator 

November  26  —  3  P.  M.,  sailed.  Vast  and  beauti 
ful  harbor.  Land  all  about  for  hours.  Tangariwa, 
the  mountain  that  "  has  the  same  shape  from  every 
point  of  view."  That  is  the  common  belief  in 
Auckland.  And  so  it  has  —  from  every  point  of 
view  except  thirteen.  .  .  .  Perfect  summer 
weather.  Large  school  of  whales  in  the  distance. 
Nothing  could  be  daintier  than  the  puffs  of  vapor 
they  spout  up,  when  seen  against  the  pink  glory  of 
the  sinking  sun,  or  against  the  dark  mass  of  an  island 
reposing  in  the  deep  blue  shadow  of  a  storm-cloud. 
Great  Barrier  rock  standing  up  out  of  the 
sea  away  to  the  left.  Some  time  ago  a  ship  hit  it 
full  speed  in  a  fog — 20  miles  out  of  her  course  — 
140  lives  lost;  the  captain  committed  suicide  with 
out  waiting  a  moment.  He  knew  that,  whether  he 
was  to  blame  or  not,  the  company  owning  the 
vessel  would  discharge  him  and  make  a  devotion-to- 
passengers'-safety  advertisement  out  of  it,  and  his 
chance  to  make  a  livelihood  would  be  permanently 
gone. 


CHAPTER   XXXIV. 

Let  us  not  be  too  particular.      It  is  better  to  have  old  second-hand  dia 
monds  than  none  at  all. —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

NOVEMBER  27.     To-day  we  reached  Gisborne, 
and  anchored  in  a  big  bay ;  there  was  a  heavy 
sea  on,  so  we  remained  on  board. 

We  were  a  mile  from  shore;  a  little  steam-tug 
put  out  from  the  land ;  she  was  an  object  of  thrill 
ing  interest ;  she  would  climb  to  the  summit  of  a 
billow,  reel  drunkenly  there  a  moment,  dim  and 
gray  in  the  driving  storm  of  spindrift,  then  make 
a  plunge  like  a  diver,  and  remain  out  of  sight  until 
one  had  given  her  up,  then  up  she  would  dart  again, 
on  a  steep  slant  toward  the  sky,  shedding  Niagaras 
of  water  from  her  forecastle  —  and  this  she  kept  up, 
all  the  way  out  to  us.  She  brought  twenty-five 
passengers  in  her  stomach  —  men  and  women  — 
mainly  a  traveling  dramatic  company.  In  sight  on 
deck  were  the  crew,  in  sou'westers,  yellow  water 
proof  canvas  suits,  and  boots  to  the  thigh.  The 
deck  was  never  quiet  for  a  moment,  and  seldom 
nearer  level  than  a  ladder,  and  noble  were  the  seas 
which  leapt  aboard  and  went  flooding  aft.  We 

(327) 


328  Following  the  Equator 

rove  a  long  line  to  the  yard-arm,  hung  a  most 
primitive  basket-chair  to  it,  and  swung  it  out  into 
the  spacious  air  of  heaven,  and  there  it  swayed, 
pendulum-fashion,  waiting  for  its  chance  —  then 
down  it  shot,  skillfully  aimed,  and  was  grabbed  by 
the  two  men  on  the  forecastle.  A  young  fellow 
belonging  to  our  crew  was  in  the  chair,  to  be  a  pro 
tection  to  the  lady-comers.  At  once  a  couple  of 
ladies  appeared  from  below,  took  seats  in  his  lap, 
we  hoisted  them  into  the  sky,  waited  a  moment  till  the 
roll  of  the  ship  brought  them  in,  overhead,  then  we 
lowered  suddenly  away,  and  seized  the  chair  as  it 
struck  the  deck.  We  took  the  twenty-five  aboard, 
and  delivered  twenty-five  into  the  tug  —  among  them 
several  aged  ladies,  and  one  blind  one  — and  all 
without  accident.  It  was  a  fine  piece  of  work. 

Ours  is  a  nice  ship,  roomy,  comfortable,  well- 
ordered,  and  satisfactory.  Now  and  then  we  step 
on  a  rat  in  a  hotel,  but  we  have  had  no  rats  on 
shipboard  lately;  unless,  perhaps,  in  the  Flora ;  we 
had  more  serious  things  to  think  of  there,  and  did 
not  notice.  I  have  noticed  that  it  is  only  in  ships 
and  hotels  which  still  employ  the  odious  Chinese 
gong,  that  you  find  rats,  The  reason  would  seem 
to  be,  that  as  a  rat  cannot  tell  the  time  of  day  by  a 
clock,  he  won't  stay  where  he  cannot  find  out  when 
dinner  is  ready. 

November  29.  The  doctor  tells  me  of  several  old 
drunkards,  one  spiritless  loafer,  and  several  far-gone 
moral  wrecks  who  have  been  reclaimed  by  the  Sal- 


Following  the  Equator  329 

vation  Army  and  have  remained  staunch  people  and 
hard  workers  these  two  years.  Wherever  one  goes, 
these  testimonials  to  the  Army's  efficiency  are  forth 
coming.  .  .  .  This  morning  we  had  one  of 
those  whizzing  green  Ballarat  flies  in  the  room,  with 
his  stunning  buzz-saw  noise  — •  the  swiftest  creature 
in  the  world  except  the  lightning-flash.  It  is  a 
stupendous  force  that  is  stored  up  in  that  little 
body.  If  we  had  it  in  a  ship  in  the  same  propor 
tion,  we  could  spin  from  Liverpool  to  New  York  in 
the  space  of  an  hour  —  the  time  it  takes  to  eat 
luncheon.  The  New  Zealand  express  train  is  called 
the  Ballarat  Fly.  .  .  .  Bad  teeth  in  the  colonies. 
A  citizen  told  me  they  don't  have  teeth  filled,  but 
pull  them  out  and  put  in  false  ones,  and  that  now 
and  then  one  sees  a  young  lady  with  a  full  set.  She 
is  fortunate.  I  wish  I  had  been  born  with  false 
teeth  and  a  false  liver  and  false  carbuncles.  I 
should  get  along  better. 

December  2.  Monday.  Left  Napier  in  the  Bal 
larat  Fly  —  the  one  that  goes  twice  a  week.  From 
Napier  to  Hastings,  twelve  miles;  time,  fifty-five 
minutes  —  not  so  far  short  of  thirteen  miles  an 
hour.  .  .  .  A  perfect  summer  day ;  cool  breeze, 
brilliant  sky,  rich  vegetation.  Two  or  three  times 
during  the  afternoon  we  saw  wonderfully  dense  and 
beautiful  forests,  tumultuously  piled  skyward  on  the 
broken  highlands  —  not  the  customary  roof -like  slant 
of  a  hillside,  where  the  trees  are  all  the  same  height. 
The  noblest  of  these  trees  were  of  the  Kauri  breed, 


330  Following  the  Equator 

we  were  told  —  the  timber  that  is  now  furnishing  the 
wood-paving  for  Europe,  and  is  the  best  of  all  wood 
for  that  purpose.  Sometimes  these  towering  up 
heavals  of  forestry  were  festooned  and  garlanded 
with  vine-cables,  and  sometimes  the  masses  of 
undergrowth  were  cocooned  in  another  sort  of  vine 
of  a  delicate  cobwebby  texture  —  they  call  it  the 
'supple-jack,"  I  think.  Tree  ferns  everywhere  — 
a  stem  fifteen  feet  high,  with  a  graceful  chalice  of 
fern-fronds  sprouting  from  its  top  —  a  lovely  forest 
ornament.  And  there  was  a  ten-foot  reed  with  a 
flowing  suit  of  what  looked  like  yellow  hair  hanging 
from  its  upper  end.  I  do  not  know  its  name,  but  if 
there  is  such  a  thing  as  a  scalp-plant,  this  is  it.  A 
romantic  gorge,  with  a  brook  flowing  in  its  bottom, 
approaching  Palmerston  North. 

Waitukurau.  Twenty  minutes  for  luncheon. 
With  me  sat  my  wife  and  daughter,  and  my 
manager,  Mr.  Carlyle  Smythe.  I  sat  at  the  head 
of  the  table,  and  could  see  the  right-hand  wall ;  the 
others  had  their  backs  to  it.  On  that  wall,  at  a 
good  distance  away,  were  a  couple  of  framed  pic 
tures.  I  could  not  see  them  clearly,  but  from  the 
groupings  of  the  figures  I  fancied  that  they  repre 
sented  the  killing  of  Napoleon  III.'s  son  by  the 
Zulus  in  South  Africa.  I  broke  into  the  conversa 
tion,  which  was  about  poetry  and  cabbage  and  art, 
and  said  to  my  wife : 

"Do  you  remember  when  the  news  came  to 
Paris—" 


Following  the  Equator  331 

"  Of  the  killing  of  the  Prince?" 

(Those  were  the  very  words  I  had  in  my  mind.) 

"  Yes,  but  what  Prince?" 

"Napoleon.     Lulu." 

41  What  made  you  think  of  that?" 

"I  don't  know." 

There  was  no  collusion.  She  had  not  seen  the 
pictures,  and  they  had  not  been  mentioned.  She 
ought  to  have  thought  of  some  recent  news  that 
came  to  Paris,  for  we  were  but  seven  months  from 
there  and  had  been  living  there  a  couple  of  years 
when  we  started  on  this  trip;  but  instead  of  that 
she  thought  of  an  incident  of  our  brief  sojourn  in 
Paris  of  sixteen  years  before. 

Here  was  a  clear  case  of  mental  telegraphy;  of 
mind-transference ;  of  my  mind  telegraphing  a  thought 
into  hers.  How  do  I  know?  Because  I  telegraphed 
an  error.  For  it  turned  out  that  the  pictures  did 
not  represent  the  killing  of  Lulu  at  ally  nor  anything 
connected  with  Lulu.  She  had  to  get  the  error 
from  my  head  —  it  existed  nowhere  else. 


CHAPTER   XXXV. 

The  Autocrat  of  Russia  possesses  more  power  than  any  other  man  in  the 
earth  ;  but  he  cannot  stop  a  sneeze.  —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WAUGANUI,  December  3.  A  pleasant  trip,  yes 
terday,  per  Ballarat  Fly.  Four  hours.  I  do 
not  know  the  distance,  but  it  must  have  been  well 
along  toward  fifty  miles.  The  Fly  could  have  spun 
it  out  to  eight  hours  and  not  discommoded  me ;  for 
where  there  is  comfort,  and  no  need  for  hurry,  speed 
is  of  no  value  —  at  least  to  me ;  and  nothing  that 
goes  on  wheels  can  be  more  comfortable,  more 
satisfactory,  than  the  New  Zealand  trains.  Outside 
of  America  there  are  no  cars  that  are  so  rationally 
devised.  When  you  add  the  constant  presence  of 
charming  scenery  and  the  nearly  constant  absence 
of  dust  —  well,  if  one  is  not  content  then,  he  ought 
to  get  out  and  walk.  That  would  change  his  spirit, 
perhaps;  1  think  so.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  you 
would  find  him  waiting  humbly  beside  the  track, 
and  glad  to  be  taken  aboard  again. 

Much  horseback  riding  in  and  around  this  town; 
many   comely    girls    in    cool    and    pretty   summer 

(332) 


Following  the  Equator  333 

gowns ;  much  Salvation  Army ;  lots  of  Maoris ;  the 
faces  and  bodies  of  some  of  the  old  ones  very  taste 
fully  frescoed.  Maori  Council  House  over  the  river 
—  large,  strong,  carpeted  from  end  to  end  with 
matting,  and  decorated  with  elaborate  wood  carv 
ings,  artistically  executed.  The  Maoris  were  very 
polite. 

I  was  assured  by  a  member  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  that  the  native  race  is  not  decreasing, 
but  actually  increasing  slightly.  It  is  another  evi 
dence  that  they  are  a  superior  breed  of  savages.  I 
do  not  call  to  mind  any  savage  race  that  built  such 
good  houses,  or  such  strong  and  ingenious  and 
scientific  fortresses,  or  gave  so  much  attention  to 
agriculture,  or  had  military  arts  and  devices  which 
so  nearly  approached  the  white  man's.  These, 
taken  together  with  their  high  abilities  in  boat 
building,  and  their  tastes  and  capacities  in  the  orna 
mental  arts,  modify  their  savagery  to  a  semi-civiliza 
tion —  or  at  least  to  a  quarter-civilization. 

It  is  a  compliment  to  them  that  the  British  did 
not  exterminate  them,  as  they  did  the  Australians 
and  the  Tasmanians,  but  were  content  with  subduing 
them,  and  showed  no  desire  to  go  further.  And  it 
is  another  compliment  to  them  that  the  British  did 
not  take  the  whole  of  their  choicest  lands,  but  left 
them  a  considerable  part,  and  then  went  further  and 
protected  them  from  the  rapacities  of  land-sharks  — 
a  protection  which  the  New  Zealand  Government 
still  extends  to  them.  And  it  is  still  another  com- 


334  Following  the  Equator 

pliment  to  the  Maoris  that  the  Government  allows 
native  representation  in  both  the  legislature  and  the 
cabinet,  and  gives  both  sexes  the  vote.  And  in 
doing  these  things  the  Government  also  compliments 
itself.  It  has  not  been  the  custom  of  the  world  for 
conquerors  to  act  in  this  large  spirit  toward  the 
conquered. 

The  highest  class  white  men  who  lived  among  the 
Maoris  in  the  earliest  time  had  a  high  opinion  of 
them  and  a  strong  affection  for  them.  Among  the 
whites  of  this  sort  was  the  author  of  "  Old  New 
Zealand";  and  Dr.  Campbell  of  Auckland  was 
another.  Dr.  Campbell  was  a  close  friend  of  several 
chiefs,  and  has  many  pleasant  things  to  say  of  their 
fidelity,  their  magnanimity,  and  their  generosity. 
Also  of  their  quaint  notions  about  the  white  man's 
queer  civilization,  and  their  equally  quaint  comments 
upon  it.  One  of  them  thought  the  missionary  had 
got  everything  wrong  end  first  and  upside  down. 
"Why,  he  wants  us  to  stop  worshiping  and  suppli 
cating  the  evil  gods,  and  go  to  worshiping  and  sup 
plicating  the  Good  One !  There  is  no  sense  in  that. 
A  good  god  is  not  going  to  do  us  any  harm." 

The  Maoris  had  the  tabu ;  and  had  it  on  a  Poly 
nesian  scale  of  comprehensiveness  and  elaboration. 
Some  of  its  features  could  have  been  importations 
from  India  and  Judea.  Neither  the  Maori  nor  the 
Hindoo  of  common  degree  could  cook  by  a  fire  that 
a  person  of  higher  caste  had  used,  nor  could  the 
high  Maori  or  high  Hindoo  employ  fire  that  had 


Following  the  Equator  335 

served  a  man  of  low  grade ;  if  a  low-grade  Maori  or 
Hindoo  drank  from  a  vessel  belonging  to  a  high- 
grade  man,  the  vessel  was  defiled,  and  had  to  be 
destroyed.  There  were  other  resemblances  between 
Maori  tabu  and  Hindoo  caste-custom. 

Yesterday  a  lunatic  burst  into  my  quarters  and 
warned  me  that  the  Jesuits  were  going  to  "cook" 
(poison)  me  in  my  food,  or  kill  me  on  the  stage  at 
night.  He  said  a  mysterious  sign  Q  was  visible 
upon  my  posters  and  meant  my  death.  He  said 
he  saved  Rev.  Mr.  Haweis'  life  by  warning  him  that 
there  were  three  men  on  his  platform  who  would  kill 
him  if  he  took  his  eyes  off  them  for  a  moment 
during  his  lecture.  The  same  men  were  in  my  audi 
ence  last  night,  but  they  saw  that  he  was  there. 
"  Will  they  be  here  again  to-night?"  He  hesitated ; 
then  said  no,  he  thought  they  would  rather  take  a 
rest  and  chance  the  poison.  This  lunatic  has  no 
delicacy.  But  he  was  not  uninteresting.  He  told 
me  a  lot  of  things.  He  said  he  had  "  saved  so  many 
lecturers  in  twenty  years,  that  they  put  him  in  the 
asylum"  I  think  he  has  less  refinement  than  any 
lunatic  I  have  met. 

December  8.  A  couple  of  curious  war-monuments 
here  at  Wanganui.  One  is  in  honor  of  white  men 
"who  fell  in  defense  of  law  and  order  against 
fanaticism  and  barbarism."  Fanaticism.  We  Ameri 
cans  are  English  in  blood,  English  in  speech,  Eng 
lish  in  religion,  English  in  the  essentials  of  our 
governmental  system,  English  in  the  essentials  of 


V  y.(V 
336  Following  the  Equator 

our  civilization;  and  so,  let  us  hope,  for  the  honor 
of  the  blend,  for  the  honor  of  the  blood,  for  the 
honor  of  the  race,  that  that  word  got  there  through 
lack  of  heedfulness,  and  will  not  be  suffered  to 
remain.  If  you  carve  it  at  Thermopylae,  or  where 
Winkelried  died,  or  upon  Bunker  Hill  monument, 
and  read  it  again — "  who  fell  in  defense  of  law  and 
order  against  fanaticism  ' ' —  you  will  perceive  what 
the  word  means,  and  how  mischosen  it  is.  Patriot 
ism  is  Patriotism.  Calling  it  Fanaticism  cannot 
degrade  it;  nothing  can  degrade  it.  Even  though 
it  be  a  political  mistake,  and  a  thousand  times  a 
political  mistake,  that  does  not  affect  it;  it  is  honor 
able —  always  honorable,  always  noble  —  and  privi 
leged  to  hold  its  head  up  and  look  the  nations  in  the 
face.  It  is  right  to  praise  these  brave  white  men 
who  fell  in  the  Maori  war  —  they  deserve  it;  but  the 
presence  of  that  word  detracts  from  the  dignity  of 
their  cause  and  their  deeds,  and  makes  them  appear 
to  have  spilled  their  blood  in  a  conflict  with  ignoble 
men,  men  not  worthy  of  that  costly  sacrifice.  But 
the  men  were  worthy.  It  was  no  shame  to  fight 
them.  They  fought  for  their  homes,  they  fought 
for  their  country ;  they  bravely  fought  and  bravely 
fell ;  and  it  would  take  nothing  from  the  honor  of 
the  brave  Englishmen  who  lie  under  the  monument, 
but  add  to  it,  to  say  that  they  died  in  defense  of 
English  laws  and  English  homes  against  men  worthy 
of  the  sacrifice  —  the  Maori  patriots. 

The  other  monument  cannot  be  rectified.     Except 


Following  the  Equator  337 

with  dynamite.  It  is  a  mistake  all  through,  and  a 
strangely  thoughtless  one.  It  is  a  monument  erected 
by  white  men  to  Maoris  who  fell  fighting  with  the 
whites  and  against  their  own  people ',  in  the  Maori 
war.  "  Sacred  to  »the  memory  of  the  brave  men 
who  fell  on  the  I4th  of  May,  1864,"  etc.  On  one 
side  are  the  names  of  about  twenty  Maoris.  It  is 
not  a  fancy  of  mine;  the  monument  exists.  I  saw 
it.  It  is  an  object-lesson  to  the  rising  generation. 
It  invites  to  treachery,  disloyalty,  unpatriotism.  Its 
lesson,  in  frank  terms  is,  "Desert  your  flag,  slay 
your  people,  burn  their  homes,  shame  your  nation 
ality —  we  honor  such." 

December  p.  Wellington.  Ten  hours  from  Wan- 
ganui  by  the  Fly. 

December  12.  It  is  a  fine  city  and  nobly  situated. 
A  busy  place,  and  full  of  life  and  movement.  Have 
spent  the  three  days  partly  in  walking  about,  partly 
in  enjoying  social  privileges,  and  largely  in  idling 
around  the  magnificent  garden  at  Hutt,  a  little  dis 
tance  away,  around  the  shore.  I  suppose  we  shall 
not  see  such  another  one  soon. 

We  are  packing  to-night  for  the  return-voyage  to 
Australia.  Our  stay  in  New  Zealand  has  been  too 
brief;  still,  we  are  not  unthankful  for  the  glimpse 
which  we  have  had  of  it. 

The  sturdy  Maoris  made  the  settlement  of   the 

country  by  the  whites  rather  difficult.     Not  at  first 

—  but  later.     At  first  they  welcomed    the  whites, 

and  were  eager   to  trade  with  them  —  particularly 

22* 


338  Following  the  Equator 

for  muskets ;  for  their  pastime  was  internecine  wai , 
and  they  greatly  preferred  the  white  man's  weapons 
to  their  own.  War  was  their  pastime  —  I  use  the 
word  advisedly.  They  often  met  and  slaughtered 
each  other  just  for  a  lark,  and,  when  there  was  no 
quarrel.  The  author  of  "  Old  New  Zealand  "  men 
tions  a  case  where  a  victorious  army  could  have  fol 
lowed  up  its  advantage  and  exterminated  the  op 
posing  army,  but  declined  to  do  it;  explaining 
naively  that  "if  we  did  that,  there  couldn't  be  any 
more  fighting."  In  another  battle  one  army  sent 
word  that  it  was  out  of  ammunition,  and  would  be 
obliged  to  stop  unless  the  opposing  army  would  send 
some.  It  was  sent,  and  the  fight  went  on. 

In  the  early  days  things  went  well  enough.  The 
natives  sold  land  without  clearly  understanding  the 
terms  of  exchange,  and  the  whites  bought  it  without 
being  much  disturbed  about  the  native's  confusion 
of  mind.  But  by  and  by  the  Maori  began  to  com 
prehend  that  he  was  being  wronged ;  then  there  was 
trouble,  for  he  was  not  the  man  to  swallow  a  wrong 
and  go  aside  and  cry  about  it.  He  had  the  Tas- 
manian's  spirit  and  endurance,  and  a  notable  share 
of  military  science  besides ;  and  so  he  rose  against 
the  oppressor,  did  this  gallant  "fanatic,"  and 
started  a  war  that  was  not  brought  to  a  definite  end 
until  more  than  a  generation  had  sped. 


CHAPTER  XXXVI. 

There  are  several  good  protections  against  temptations,  but  the  surest  is 
Cowardice. —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

Names  are  not  always  what  they  seem.  The  common  Welsh  name 
Bzjxxllwcp  is  pronounced  Jackson. —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

FRIDAY,  December  13.     Sailed,  at  3  P.M.,  in  the 
Mararoa.     Summer  seas  and  a  good  ship  —  life 
has  nothing  better. 

Monday.  Three  days  of  paradise.  Warm  and 
sunny  and  smooth ;  the  sea  a  luminous  Mediterra 
nean  blue.  .  .  .  One  lolls  in  a  long  chair  all  day  under 
deck-awnings,  and  reads  and  smokes,  in  measureless 
content.  One  does  not  read  prose  at  such  a  time, 
but  poetry.  I  have  been  reading  the  poems  of 
Mrs.  Julia  A.  Moore,  again,  and  I  find  in  them 
the  same  grace  and  melody  that  attracted  me  when 
they  were  first  published,  twenty  years  ago,  and  have 
held  me  in  happy  bonds  ever  since.  "The  Senti 
mental  Song  Book  "  has  long  been  out  of  print,  and 
has  been  forgotten  by  the  world  in  general,  but  not 
by  me.  I  carry  it  with  me  always  —  it  and  Gold 
smith's  deathless  story.  .  .  .  Indeed,  it  has  the 
same  deep  charm  for  me  that  the  Vicar  of  Wakefield 
has,  and  I  find  in  it  the  same  subtle  touch  —  the 
v*  (339) 


340  Following  the  Equator 

touch  that  makes  an  intentionally  humorous  episode 
pathetic  and  an  intentionally  pathetic  one  funny.  In 
her  time  Mrs.  Moore  was  called  "  the  Sweet  Singer 
of  Michigan,"  and  was  best  known  by  that  name.  I 
have  read  her  book  through  twice  to-day,  with  the 
purpose  of  determining  which  of  her  pieces  has  most 
merit,  and  I  am  persuaded  that  for  wide  grasp  and 
sustained  power,  *' William  Up  son  "  may  claim  first 
place : 

WILLIAM  UPSON. 
Am — "  The  Major's  Only  Son." 

Come  all  good  people  far  and  near, 
Oh,  come  and  see  what  you  can  hear, 
It's  of  a  young  man  true  and  brave, 
That  is  now  sleeping  in  his  grave. 

Now,  William  Upson  was  his  name  — 
If  it's  not  that,  it's  all  the  same  — 
He  did  enlist  in  a  cruel  strife, 
And  it  caused  him  to  lose  his  life. 

He  was  Perry  Upson's  eldest  son, 
His  father  loved  his  noble  son, 
This  son  was  nineteen  years  of  age 
When  first  in  the  rebellion  he  engaged. 

His  father  said  that  he  might  go, 

But  his  dear  mother  she  said  no, 

"Oh!  stay  at  home,  dear  Billy,"  she  said, 

But  she  could  not  turn  his  head. 

He  went  to  Nashville,  in  Tennessee, 
There  his  kind  friends  he  could  not  see; 
He  died  among  strangers,  so  far  away, 
They  did  not  know  where  his  body  lay. 


Following  the  Equator  341 

He  was  taken  sick  and  lived  four  weeks, 
And  Oh !  how  his  parents  weep, 
But  now  they  must  in  sorrow  mourn, 
For  Billy  has  gone  to  his  heavenly  home. 

Oh!  if  his  mother  could  have  seen  her  son, 

For  she  loved  him,  her  darling  son; 

If  she  could  heard  his  dying  prayer, 

It  would  ease  her  heart  till  she  met  him  there. 

How  it  would  relieve  his  mother's  heart 
To  see  her  son  from  this  world  depart, 
And  hear  his  noble  words  of  love, 
As  he  left  this  world  for  that  above. 

Now  it  will  relieve  his  mother's  heart, 
For  her  son  is  laid  in  our  graveyard; 
For  now  she  knows  that  his  grave  is  near, 
She  will  not  shed  so  many  tears. 

Although  she  knows  not  that  it  was  her  son, 
For  his  coffin  could  not  be  opened  — 
It  might  be  someone  in  his  place, 
For  she  could  not  see  his  noble  face. 

December  ij.     Reached  Sydney. 

December  19.  In  the  train.  Fellow  of  30  with 
four  valises ;  a  slim  creature,  with  teeth  which  made 
his  mouth  look  like  a  neglected  churchyard.  He 
had  solidified  hair  —  solidified  with  pomatum;  it 
was  all  one  shell.  He  smoked  the  most  extraordi 
nary  cigarettes  —  made  of  some  kind  of  manure,  ap 
parently.  These  and  his  hair  made  him  smell  like 
the  very  nation.  He  had  a  low-cut  vest  on,  which 
exposed  a  deal  of  frayed  and  broken  and  unclean 
shirt-front.  Showy  studs,  of  imitation  gold  —  they 


/  ;/V~*-     .. 


342  Following  the  Equator 

had  made  black  disks  on  the  linen.  Oversized  sleeve 
buttons  of  imitation  gold,  the  copper  base  showing 
that.  Ponderous  watch-chain  of  imitation  gold.  I 
judge  he  couldn't  tell  the  time  by  it,  for  he  asked 
Smythe  what  time  it  was,  once.  He  wore  a  coat 
which  had  been  gay  when  it  was  young;  5-o'clock- 
tea-trousers  of  a  light  tint,  and  marvelously  soiled  ; 
yellow  moustache  with  a  dashing  upward  whirl  at  the 
ends;  foxy  shoes,  imitation  patent  leather.  He  was 
a  novelty  —  an  imitation  dude.  He  would  have  been 
a  real  one  if  he  could  have  afforded  it.  But  he  was 
satisfied  with  himself.  You  could  see  it  in  his  ex 
pression,  and  in  all  his  attitudes  and  movements. 
He  was  living  in  a  dude  dreamland  where  all  his 
squalid  shams  were  genuine,  and  himself  a  sincerity. 
It  disarmed  criticism,  it  mollified  spite,  to  see  him  so 
enjoy  his  imitation  languors,  and  arts,  and  airs,  and 
his  studied  daintinesses  of  gesture  and  misbegotten 
refinements.  It  was  plain  to  me  that  he  was  imagin 
ing  himself  the  Prince  of  Wales,  and  was  doing  every 
thing  the  way  he  thought  the  Prince  would  do  it. 
For  bringing  his  four  valises  aboard  and  stowing 
them  in  the  nettings,  he  gave  his  porter  four  cents, 
and  lightly  apologized  for  the  smallness  of  the 
gratuity  —  just  with  the  condescendingest  little  royal 
air  in  the  world.  He  stretched  himself  out  on  the 
front  seat  and  rested  his  pomatum-cake  on  the  mid 
dle  arm,  and  stuck  his  feet  out  of  the  window,  and 
began  to  pose  as  the  Prince  and  work  his  dreams  and 
languors  for  exhibition  ;  and  he  would  indolently 


Following  the  Equator  343 

watch  the  blue  films  curling  up  from  his  cigarette, 
and  inhale  the  stench,  and  look  so  grateful;  and 
would  flip  the  ash  away  with  the  daintiest  gesture, 
unintentionally  displaying  his  brass  ring  in  the 
most  intentional  way;  why,  it  was  as  good  as 
being  in  Marlborough  House  itself  to  see  him  do  it 
so  like. 

There  was  other  scenery  in  the  trip.  That  of  the 
Hawksbury  river,  in  the  National  Park  region,  fine  — 
extraordinarily  fine,  with  spacious  views  of  stream 
and  lake  imposingly  framed  in  woody  hills;  and 
every  now  and  then  the  noblest  groupings  of  moun 
tains,  and  the  most  enchanting  rearrangements  of  the 
water  effects.  Further  along,  green  flats,  thinly 
covered  with  gum  forests,  with  here  and  there  the 
huts  and  cabins  of  small  farmers  engaged  in  raising 
children.  Still  further  along,  arid  stretches,  lifeless 
and  melancholy.  Then  Newcastle,  a  rushing  town, 
capital  of  the  rich  coal  regions.  Approaching  Scone, 
wide  farming  and  grazing  levels,  with  pretty  frequent 
glimpses  of  a  troublesome  plant  —  a  particularly 
devilish  little  prickly  pear,  daily  damned  in  the 
orisons  of  the  agriculturist ;  imported  by  a  lady  of 
sentiment,  and  contributed  gratis  to  the  colony.  .  .  . 
Blazing  hot,  all  day. 

December  20.  Back  to  Sydney.  Blazing  hot 
again.  From  the  newspaper,  and  from  the  map,  I 
have  made  a  collection  of  curious  names  of  Aus 
tralasian  towns,  with  the  idea  of  making  a  poem  out 
of  them: 


344 


Following  the  Equator 


Tumut 

Waitpinga 

Wollongong 

Takee 

Goelwa 

Woolloomooloo 

Murriwillumba 

Munno  Para 

Bombola 

Bowral 

Nangkita 

Coolgardie 

Ballarat 

Myponga 

Bendigo 

Mullengudgery 

Kapunda 

Coonamble 

Murrurundi 

Kooringa 

Cootamundra 

Wagga-Wagga 

Penola 

Woolgoolga 

Wyalong 

Nangwarry 

Mittagong 

Murrumbidgee 

Kongorong 

Jamberoo 

Goomeroo 

Comaum 

Kondoparinga 

Wolloway 

Koolywurtie 

Kuitpo 

Wangary 

Killanoola 

Tungkillo 

Wanilla 

Naracoorte 

Oukaparinga 

Worrow 

Muloowurtie 

Talunga 

Koppio 

Binnum 

Yataia 

Yankalilla 

Wallaroo 

Parawirra 

Yaranyacka 

Wirrega 

Moorooroo 

Yackamoorundie 

Mundoora 

Whangarei 

Kaiwaka 

Hauraki 

Woolundunga 

Goomooroo 

Rangiriri 

Booleroo 

Tauranga 

Teawamute 

Pernatty 

Geelong 

Taranaki 

Parramatta 

Tongariro 

Toowoomba 

Taroom 

Kaikoura 

Goondiwindi 

Narrandera 

Wakatipu 

Jerrilderie 

Deniliquin 

Oohipara 

Whangaroa 

Kawakawa. 

It  may  be  best  to  build  the  poem  now,  and  make 
the  weather  help  : 

A  SWELTERING  DAY  IN  AUSTRALIA. 
(  To  be  read  soft  and  /ow,  with  the  lights  turned  down.) 

The  Bombola  faints  in  the  hot  Bowral  tree, 
Where  fierce  Mullengudgery's  smothering  fires 

Far  from  the  breezes  of  Coolgardie 

Burn  ghastly  and  blue  as  the  day  expires; 


Following  the  Equator  345 

And  Murriwillumba  complaineth  in  song 

For  the  garlanded  bowers  of  Woolloomooloo, 

And  the  Ballarat  Fly  and  the  lone  Wollongong 
They  dream  of  the  gardens  of  Jamberoo; 

The  wallabi  sighs  for  the  Murrumbid^, 

For  the  velvety  sod  of  the  Munno  Parati, 
Where  the  waters  of  healing  from  Muloowur/z> 

Flow  dim  in  the  gloaming  by  Yaranyac&z^/ 

The  Koppio  sorrows  for  lost  Wolloway, 

And  sigheth  in  secret  for  Murrurun^/z, 
The  Whangaroa  wombat  lamenteth  the  day 

That  made  him  an  exile  from  JerrilderzV; 

The  Teawamute  Tumut  from  Wirrega's  glade, 
The  Nangkita  swallow,  the  Wallaroo  swan, 

They  long  for  the  peace  of  the  Timaru  shade 
And  thy  balmy  soft  airs,  O  sweet  Mittagong ! 

The  Kooringa  buffalo  pants  in  the  sun, 

The  Kondoparinga  lies  gaping  for  breath, 
The  Kongorong  Comaum  to  the  shadow  has  won, 

But  the  Goomeroo  sinks  in  the  slumber  of  death; 

In  the  weltering  hell  of  the  Moorooroo  plain 

The  Yatala  Wangary  withers  and  dies, 
And  the  Worrow  Wanilla,  demented  with  pain, 

To  the  Woolgoolga  woodlands  despairingly  flies; 

Sweet  Nangwarry's  desolate,  Coonamble  wails, 

And  Tungkillo  Kuitpo  in  sables  is  drest, 
For  the  Whangarei  winds  fall  asleep  in  the  sails 

And  the  Booleroo  life-breeze  is  dead  in  the  west. 

Myponga,  Kapunda,  O  slumber  no  more ! 

Yankalilla,  Parawirra,  be  warned  ! 
There's  death  in  the  air  !     Killanoola,  wherefore 

Shall  the  prayer  of  Penola  be  scorned? 

Cootamundra,  and  Takee,  and  Wakatipu, 

Toowoomba,  Kaikoura  are  lost ! 
From  Oukaparinga  to  far  Oamaru 

All  burn  in  this  hell's  holocaust ! 


346  Following  the  Equator 

Parramatta  and  Binnum  are  gone  to  their  rest 

In  the  vale  of  Tapanni  Taroom, 
Kawakawa,  Deniliquin  —  all  that  was  best 

In  the  earth  are  but  graves  and  a  tomb ! 

Narrandera  mourns,  Cameroo  answers  not 

When  the  roll  of  the  scathless  we  cry : 
Tongariro,  Goondiwindi,  Woolundunga,  the  spot 

Is  mute  and  forlorn  where  ye  lie. 

Those  are  good  words  for  poetry.  Among  the 
best  I  have  ever  seen.  There  are  81  in  the  list.  I 
did  not  need  them  all,  but  I  have  knocked  down  66 
of  them ;  which  is  a  good  bag,  it  seems  to  me,  for  a 
person  not  in  the  business.  Perhaps  a  poet  laureate 
could  do  better,  but  a  poet  laureate  gets  wages,  and 
that  is  different.  When  I  write  poetry  I  do  not  get 
any  wages;  often  I  lose  money  by  it.  The  best 
Word  ;n  that  list,  and  the  most  musical  and  gurgly, 
is  Woolloomooloo.  It  is  a  place  near  Sydney,  and  is 
a  favorite  pleasure  resort.  It  has  eight  O's  in  it. 


EACH    CARRIED    ONE    ARTICLE 


OF   THE 

UNIVERSITY 


FO  LLOWI  N  G 
THE      EQUATOR 

A  JOURNEY  AROUND  THE  WORLD 
BY  MARK  TWAIN 


ILLUSTRATED 


VOL.    II. 


NEW  YORK    AND    LONDON 
HARPER   &   BROTHERS    PUBLISHERS 


Copyright,  1897  and  '899,  by  OLIVIA  L.  CLEMENS. 

(All  rights  reserved.) 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

EACH   CARRIED   ONE   ARTICLE Frontispiece 

"YOUR  HONOR  'LL  KNOW  THAT  DOG'S  DIMEN 
SIONS" Facing  p.  108 

THE  MATE'S  SHADOW  FROZE  TO  THE  DECK  .     .         "       311 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  I. 

Off  for  Ceylon  —  Ship  Cats  —  Dinner  Conversations  —  Albany 
(King  George's  Sound)  —  Ceylon  —  Hotel  Bristol  —  Servant 
Brompy  —  Jinriksha  or  Cart  —  A  Missionary  School  ...  II 

CHAPTER  II. 

Steamer  Rosetta  to  Bombay  —  A  Bewitching  City  —  India,  the 
Land  of  Dreams  and  Romance  —  Arranging  a  Bedroom  — 
Correcting  a  Servant  —  The  Bird  of  Birds,  the  Indian  Crow  .  23 

CHAPTER  III. 

God  Vishnu,  108  Names  —  Change  of  Titles  or  Hunting  for  an 
Heir  —  Bombay  as  a  Kaleidoscope  —  Servants'  Recommenda 
tions —  Manuel,  his  Name  and  his  English  —  Satan  ...  35 

CHAPTER  IV. 

Government  House  at  Malabar  Point  —  Mansion  of  Kumar  Shri 
Samatsin  Hji  Bahadur  —  Indian  Princess  —  Ceremonials  — 
Decorations  —  The  Towers  of  Silence  —  A  Funeral  ...  50 

CHAPTER  V. 

A  Jain  Temple— Mr.  Roychand's  Bungalow — A  Decorated  Six- 
Gun  Prince  —  Human  Fireworks  —  Complexions  —  Festivi 
ties  at  the  Bungalow  —  Nautch  Dancers 60 

CHAPTER  VI. 
A  Hindoo  Betrothal,  Sleepers   on   the   Ground  —  Illumination  — 

Nautch  Girls  —  Imitating  Snakes  —  Later  —  The  Plague       .     69 

(v) 


vi  Contents 

CHAPTER  VII. 

Murder  Trial  in  Bombay  —  Some  Specialties  of  India — The 
Plague,  Juggernaut,  Suttee,  etc.  —  More  Custom  Houses 
than  Cats  —  Rich  Ground  for  Thug  Society 76 

CHAPTER  VIII. 

Official  Thug  Book  —  Supplies  for  Traveling  —  Scene  at  Railway 
Station  —  Our  Car  —  Beds  Made  Up  —  Dreaming  of  Thugs  — 
Town  of  Baroda  —  Narrow  Streets —A  Mad  Elephant  .  .87 

CHAPTER  IX. 

Elephant  Riding  —  Howdahs — The  Prince's  Excursion  —  Gold 
and  Silver  Artillery  —  A  Vice-royal  Visit  —  Remarkable  Dog 

—  Augustin  Daly's  Back  Door  —  Fakeer 96 

CHAPTER  X. 

The  Thugs  —  Government  Efforts  to  Exterminate  Them  —  Chok 
ing  a  Victim  —  A  Fakeer  Spared  —  Thief  Strangled  .  .  in 

CHAPTER  XI. 

Thugs,  Continued  —  Record  of  Murders  —  The  Joy  of  Hunting 
and  Killing  Men  —  Gordon  Cumming  Killed  an  Elephant  — 
Family  Affection  Among  Thugs  —  Burial  Places  .  .  .  .125 

CHAPTER  XII. 

Off  for  Allahabad  —  Lower  Berths  in  Sleepers  —  Elderly  Ladies 
Given  Choice  of  Berths  —  American  Lady  Takes  One  Any 
how  —  How  Smythe  Lost  His  Berth  —  The  Suttee  .  .  .  .138 

CHAPTER  XIII. 

Pajamas  —  Day  Scene  in  India  —  Land  Parceled  Out  —  Established 
Wedding  Display  and  Servants  —  Destruction  of  Girl  Babies 

—  Curious  Rivers  —  At  Allahabad  —  A  Milliner  —  The  Squat 
ting  Servant  —  A  Religious  Fair IS1 

CHAPTER  XIV. 

On  the  Road  —  Dust  —  Benares  —  Zenana  Ladies  —  Doors  in 
India  —  The  Peepul  Tree  —  Strange  Fruit  —  Pilgrims  — • 
Protestant  Missionary — The  Trinity  —  The  Business  of  Benares  1 68 


Contents  vii 

CHAPTER  XV. 

Benares  a  Religious  Temple  —  A  Guide  for  Pilgrims  to  Save  Time 

in  Securing  Salvation 179 

CHAPTER  XVI. 

Working  for  Salvation  —  Trip  on  the  River  Ganges — Hindoo 
Faith  in  the  Water— Cremation— The  Suttee  —  Goddess 
Bhowanee  —  Sacred  Monkeys  —  Minarets — A  Water  Picture  190 

CHAPTER  XVII. 

/isit  to  Sri  108,  a  Living  God  — Utterly  Perfect  — How  He 
Came  so — A  Friendly  Deity  —  Sri's  Pupil  —  An  Interesting 
Man  —  Reverence  and  Irreverence  —  Dancing  in  a  Sepulchre  203 

CHAPTER  XVIII. 

Rail  to  Calcutta  — The  "City  of  Palaces "  —  Fluted  Candlestick 

—  Wrong   Idea   of   Chicago  —  The  Black    Hole  —  Botanical 
Gardens  —  Afternoon  Turnout — The  Hoogly — Museum       .  215 

CHAPTER  XIX. 

Across  Country  —  Women  Workers  in  India  and  Other  Countries 

—  Tiger  Hunting — Plains  of  India — The  Ghurkas  —  Substi 
tute  for  a  Cab  —  Darjeeling  —  The  Himalayas — Thibetans  .  224 

CHAPTER  XX. 

On  the  Road  Again  —  Thirty-five-mile  Slide  —  Banyan  Tree  —  A 
Dramatic  Performance  —  The  Railroad  Loop  —  Half-way 
House  —  New  Birds  for  America 235 

CHAPTER  XXI. 

India,  the  Land  of  Wonders  —  Statistics  About  Violence — Tiger 
vs.  Man  —  Other  Animals  —  Muzaffurpore  —  Dinapore  —  A 
Train  that  Stopped  for  Gossip  —  To  Lucknow 243 

CHAPTER  XXII. 

The  Great  Mutiny  —  The  Massacre  in  Cawnpore  —  Terrible  Scenes 
in  Lucknow  —  The  Residency  —  The  Siege  —  Sir  Colin  Camp 
bell's  March  to  the  Rescue 250 


viii  Contents 

CHAPTER  XXIII. 

A  Visit  to  the  Residency  —  Cawnpore  —  The  Adjutant  Bird  and 
the  Hindoo  Corpse  —  The  Taj  Mahal  —  The  Ice  Storm  —  True 
Gems  —  Syrian  Fountains  —  An  Exaggerated  Niagara  .  .  .  266 

CHAPTER  XXIV. 

To  Lahore  —  Riding  the  Governor's  Elephant — Rawal  Pindi  — 
To  Delhi  —  Riotous  Monkeys — At  Jeypore  —  Satan  as  a 
Liar  —  Museum  —  A  Street  Show  —  Religious  Procession  .  282 

CHAPTER  XXV. 

Methods  of  American  Public  Schools— Highly  Educated  Service 

—  Embarrassed  by   a   Beggar  Girl  —  A  Calcutta  School  Ex 
amination — Two  Samples  of  Literature 295 

CHAPTER  XXVI. 

From  Calcutta  to  Madras,  to  Ceylon,  to  Mauritius  —  The  Indian 
Ocean  —  Story  of  Cold  Weather — Perfect  Rest  —  Mauritius 

—  Port  Louis — Train  to  Curepipe  —  Language  —  Literature  .  308 

CHAFFER  XXVII. 

Port  Louis  —  Matches  no  Good  —  Death  Notices  —  Population — • 
Labor  Wages  —  The  Camaron  —  Monkeys — The  Cyclone  of 
1892  —  Mauritius  a  Sunday  Landscape 320 

CHAPTER  XXVIII. 

Steamer  "  Arundel  Castle  "  —  Beds  in  Noah's  Ark  —  Mozambique 
Channel  —  Honoring  His  Flag— Delagoa  Bay  — Small  Town 

—  Working  Women  —  Barnum's  Purchase  —  Arrival  at  Durban  329 

CHAPTER  XXIX. 

Durban  Hotel  — Bells  — Early  Attentions  — The  Temperature  — 
Rickshaws  —  A  Pet  Chameleon  —  Natives  Retire  Early — Re 
ligion  a  Vital  Matter  — Trappist  Monastery— Transvaal  Politics  341 

CHAPTER  XXX. 

Jameson's  Defeat  and  Capture  —  Arrests  by  the  Boers  —  Com 
muted  Sentences  — Hard  to  Understand  Either  Side  — Truth 
of  the  South  African  Situation  —  "Jameson's  Ride  "  —  Poem  350 


Contents  ix 

CHAPTER  XXXI. 

Jameson's  Raid  —  Advice  that  Jameson  Ought  to  Have  —  The 
War  of  1 88 1  and  its  Lessons  —  Jameson's  Battles — How  the 
Warfare  Should  Have  Been  Carried  on 361 

CHAPTER  XXXII. 

Cecil  Rhodes  — What  South  Africa  is  —  Johannesburg  —  Gold 
Mines  —  The  Boer  —  Taxes  —  Journeying  in  Cape  Colony  — 
The  Country  —  Reformers  in  Boer  Prison 379 

CHAPTER  XXXIII. 

The  Kimberley  Diamond  Mines  —  Finding  a  Diamond  —  Deep 
Mining  by  Natives  —  Stealing  —  The  Great  Diamond  —  Office 
of  the  De  Beers  Co.  —  Cape  Town 392 

CONCLUSION. 

Table  Rock —  Table  Bay  — The  Castle  — Government  and  Par- 
liament — The  Club  —  Dutch  Mansions — Dr.  John  Barry  — 
Ship  Norman — Madeira — Arrival  in  Southampton     •     •     .  406 


FOLLOWING  THE   EQUATOR 


CHAPTER   I. 

To  succeed  in  the  other  trades,  capacity  must  be  shown ;  in  the  law,  con- 
cealment  of  it  will  do.—Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

MONDAY,  December  23,  1895*  Sailed  from 
Sydney  for  Ceylon  in  the  P.  &  O.  steamer 
Oceana.  A  Lascar  crew  mans  this  ship  —  the  first 
/  have  seen.  White  cotton  petticoat  and  pants; 
barefoot;  red  shawl  for  belt;  straw  cap,  brimless, 
on  head,  with  red  scarf  wound  around  it;  complex 
ion  a  rich  dark  brown ;  short  straight  black  hair ; 
whiskers  fine  and  silky ;  lustrous  and  intensely  black. 
Mild,  good  faces;  willing  and  obedient  people; 
capable,  too;  but  are  said  to  go  into  hopeless  panics 
when  there  is  danger.  They  are  from  Bombay  and 
the  coast  thereabouts.  .  .  .  Left  some  of  the 
trunks  in  Sydney,  to  be  shipped  to  South  Africa  by 
a  vessel  advertised  to  sail  three  months  hence.  The 
proverb  says:  *'  Separate  not  yourself  from  your 
baggage."  .  .  .  This  Oceana  is  a  stately  big 
ship,  luxuriously  appointed.  She  has  spacious 
promenade  decks.  Large  rooms;  a  surpassingly 
comfortable  ship.  The  officers'  library  is  well 
selected;  a  ship's  library  is  not  usually  that.  .  .  . 
For  meals,  the  bugle  call,  man-of-war  fashion;  a 


12  Following  the  Equator 

pleasant  change  from  the  terrible  gong.  .  .  . 
Three  big  cats — very  friendly  loafers;  they  wander 
all  over  the  ship ;  the  white  one  follows  the  chief 
steward  around  like  a  dog.  There  is  also  a  basket 
of  kittens.  One  of  these  cats  goes  ashore,  in  port, 
in  England,  Australia,  and  India,  to  see  how  his 
various  families  are  getting  along,  and  is  seen  no 
more  till  the  ship  is  ready  to  sail.  No  one  knows 
how  he  finds  out  the  sailing  date,  but  no  doubt  he 
comes  down  to  the  dock  every  day  and  takes  a  look, 
and  when  he  sees  baggage  and  passengers  flocking 
in,  recognizes  that  it  is  time  to  get  aboard.  This  is 
what  the  sailors  believe.  .  .  .  The  Chief  En^ 
gineer  has  been  in  the  China  and  India  trade  thirty- 
three  years,  and  has  had  but  three  Christmases  at 
home  in  that  time.  .  .  .  Conversational  items 
at  dinner:  "  Mocha!  sold  all  over  the  world!  It  is 
not  true.  In  fact,  very  few  foreigners  except  the 
Emperor  of  Russia  have  ever  seen  a  grain  of  it,  or 
ever  will,  while  they  live."  Another  man  said: 
"There  is  no  sale  in  Australia  for  Australian  wine. 
But  it  goes  to  France  and  comes  back  with  a  French 
label  on  it,  and  then  they  buy  it."  I  have  heard 
that  the  most  of  the  French-labeled  claret  in  New 
York  is  made  in  California.  And  I  remember  what 
Professor  S.  told  me  once  about  Veuve  Clicquot—  if 
that  was  the  wine,  and  I  think  it  was.  He  was  the 
guest  of  a  great  wine  merchant  whose  town  was  quite 
near  that  vineyard,  and  this  merchant  asked  him  if 
very  much  V.  C.  was  drunk  in  America. 


Following  the  Equator  13 

"  Oh,  yes,"  said  S.,  "  a  great  abundance  of  it." 

"Is  it  easy  to  be  had?" 

"  Oh,  yes  —  easy  as  water.  All  first  and  second- 
class  hotels  have  it." 

"  What  do  you  pay  for  it?  " 

"It  depends  on  the  style  of  the  hotel  —  from 
fifteen  to  twenty-five  francs  a  bottle." 

"Oh,  fortunate  country!  Why,  it's  worth  100 
francs  right  here  on  the  ground." 

"No." 

"Yes." 

"  Do  you  mean  that  we  are  drinking  a  bogus 
Veuve  Clicquot  over  there?" 

4 '  Yes  —  and  there  was  never  a  bottle  of  the  gen 
uine  in  America  since  Columbus's  time.  That  wine 
all  comes  from  a  little  bit  of  a  patch  of  ground  which 
isn't  big  enough  to  raise  many  bottles;  and  all  of  it 
that  is  produced  goes  every  year  to  one  person  — 
the  Emperor  of  Russia.  He  takes  the  whole  crop 
in  advance,  be  it  big  or  little." 

January  ^,  1896.  Christmas  in  Melbourne,  New 
Year's  Day  in  Adelaide,  and  saw  most  of  the  friends 
again  in  both  places.  .  .  .  Lying  here  at  anchor 
all  day  —  Albany  (King  George's  Sound),  Western 
Australia.  It  is  a  perfectly  land-locked  harbor,  or 
roadstead —  spacious  to  look  at,  but  not  deep  water. 
Desolate-looking  rocks  and  scarred  hills.  Plenty  of 
ships  arriving  now,  rushing  to  the  new  gold-fields. 
The  papers  are  full  of  wonderful  tales  of  the  sort 
always  to  be  heard  in  connection  with  new  gold  dif- 

o** 


14  Following  the  Equator 

gings.  A  sample:  a  youth  staked  out  a  claim  and 
tried  to  sell  half  for  £$  ;  no  takers ;  he  stuck  to  it 
fourteen  days,  starving,  then  struck  it  rich  and  sold 
out  for  ;£io,ooo.  .  .  .  About  sunset,  strong 
breeze  blowing,  got  up  the  anchor.  We  were  in  a 
small  deep  puddle,  with  a  narrow  channel  leading 
out  of  it,  minutely  buoyed,  to  the  sea.  I  stayed 
on  deck  to  see  how  we  were  going  to  manage  it  with 
such  a  big  ship  and  such  a  strong  wind.  On  the 
bridge  our  giant  captain,  in  uniform ;  at  his  side  a 
little  pilot  in  elaborately  gold-laced  uniform ;  on  the 
forecastle  a  white  mate  and  quartermaster  or  two, 
and  a  brilliant  crowd  of  lascars  standing  by  for  busi 
ness.  Our  stern  was  pointing  straight  at  the  head 
of  the  channel;  so  we  must  turn  entirely  around  in 
the  puddle  —  and  the  wind  blowing  as  described.  It 
was  done,  and  beautifully.  It  was  done  by  help 
of  a  jib.  We  stirred  up  much  mud,  but  did  not 
touch  the  bottom.  We  turned  right  around  in  our 
tracks  —  a  seeming  impossibility.  We  had  several 
casts  of  quarter-less  5,  and  one  cast  of  half  4  —  27 
feet;  we  were  drawing  26  astern.  By  the  time  we 
were  entirely  around  and  pointed,  the  first  buoy  was 
not  more  than  a  hundred  yards  in  front  of  us.  It 
was  a  fine  piece  of  work,  and  I  was  the  only  passen 
ger  that  saw  it.  However,  the  others  got  their 
dinner;  the  P.  &  O.  Company  got  mine. 
More  cats  developed.  Smythe  says  it  is  a  British 
law  that  they  must  be  carried ;  and  he  instanced  a 
case  of  a  ship  not  allowed  to  sail  till  she  sent  for  a 


Following  the  Equator  15 

couple.  The  bill  came,  too:  "  Debtor,  to  2  cats, 
20  shillings."  .  .  e  News  comes  that  within 
this  week  Siam  has  acknowledged  herself  to  be,  in 
effect,  a  French  province.  It  seems  plain  that  all 
savage  and  semi-civilized  countries  are  going  to 
be  grabbed.  ...  A  vulture  on  board;  bald, 
red,  queer-shaped  head,  featherless  red  places  here 
and  there  on  his  body,  intense  great  black  eyes  set 
in  featherless  rims  of  inflamed  flesh;  dissipated 
look;  a  business-like  style,  a  selfish,  conscienceless, 
murderous  aspect  —  the  very  look  of  a  professional 
assassin,  and  yet  a  bird  which  does  no  murder. 
What  was  the  use  of  getting  him  up  in  that  tragic 
style  for  so  innocent  a  trade  as  his?  For  this  one 
isn't  the  sort  that  wars  upon  the  living,  his  diet  is 
offal  —  and  the  more  out  of  date  it  is  the  better  he 
likes  it.  Nature  should  give  him  a  suit  of  rusty 
black;  then  he  would  be  all  right,  for  he  would 
look  like  an  undertaker  and  would  harmonize  with 
his  business ;  whereas  the  way  he  is  now  he  is  hor 
ribly  out  of  true. 

January  5.  At  9  this  morning  we  passed  Cape 
Leeuwin  (lioness)  and  ceased  from  our  long  due- 
west  course  along  the  southern  shore  of  Australia. 
Turning  this  extreme  southwestern  corner,  we  now 
take  a  long  straight  slant  nearly  N.  W.,  without  a 
break,  for  Ceylon.  As  we  speed  northward  it  will 
grow  hotter  very  fast  —  but  it  isn't  chilly,  now. 
.  The  vulture  is  from  the  public  menagerie 
at  Adelaide  —  a  great  and  interesting  collection.  It 


16  Following  the  Equator 

was  there  that  we  saw  the  baby  tiger  solemnly  spread 
ing  its  mouth  and  trying  to  roar  like  its  majestic 
mother.  It  swaggered,  scowling,  back  and  forth  on 
its  short  legs  just  as  it  had  seen  her  do  on  her  long 
ones,  and  now  and  then  snarling  viciously,  exposing 
its  teeth,  with  a  threatening  lift  of  its  upper  lip  and 
bristling  moustache ;  and  when  it  thought  it  was  im 
pressing  the  visitors,  it  would  spread  its  mouth  wide 
and  do  that  screechy  cry  which  it  meant  for  a  roar, 
but  which  did  not  deceive.  It  took  itself  quite 
seriously,  and  was  lovably  comical.  And  there  was 
a  hyena  —  an  ugly  creature ;  as  ugly  as  the  tiger-kitty 
was  pretty.  It  repeatedly  arched  its  back  and  de 
livered  itself  of  such  a  human  cry ;  a  startling  resem 
blance  ;  a  cry  which  was  just  that  of  a  grown  person 
badly  hurt.  In  the  dark  one  would  assuredly  go  to 
its  assistance  —  and  be  disappointed.  .  .  .  Many 
friends  of  Australasian  Federation  on  board.  They 
feel  sure  that  the  good  day  is  not  far  off,  now.  But 
there  seems  to  be  a  party  that  would  go  further  — 
have  Australasia  cut  loose  from  the  British  Empire 
and  set  up  housekeeping  on  her  own  hook.  It 
seems  an  unwise  idea.  They  point  to  the  United 
States,  but  it  seems  to  me  that  the  cases  lack  a  good 
deal  of  being  alike.  Australasia  governs  herself 
wholly  —  there  is  no  interference;  and  her  commerce 
and  manufactures  are  not  oppressed  in  any  way.  If 
our  case  had  been  the  same  we  should  not  have  gone 
out  when  we  did. 

January  ij.     Unspeakably  hot.     The  equator  is 


Following  the  Equator  17 

arriving  again.  We  are  within  eight  degrees  of  it. 
Ceylon  present.  Dear  me,  it  is  beautiful !  And 
most  sumptuously  tropical,  as  to  character  of  foliage 
and  opulence  of  it.  "  What  though  the  spicy  breezes 
blow  soft  o'er  Ceylon's  isle  " — an  eloquent  line,  an 
incomparable  line;  it  says  little,  but  conveys  whole 
libraries  of  sentiment,  and  Oriental  charm  and 
mystery,  and  tropic  deliciousness- — a  line  that 
quivers  and  tingles  with  a  thousand  unexpressed  and 
inexpressible  things,  things  that  haunt  one  and  find 
no  articulate  voice.  .  .  .  Colombo,  the  capital. 
An  Oriental  town,  most  manifestly;  and  fascinating. 
In  this  palatial  ship  the  passengers  dress  for 
dinner.  The  ladies'  toilettes  make  a  fine  display  of 
color,  and  this  is  in  keeping  with  the  elegance  of  the 
vessel's  furnishings  and  the  flooding  brilliancies  of 
the  electric  light.  On  the  stormy  Atlantic  one  never 
sees  a  man  in  evening  dress,  except  at  the  rarest  in 
tervals  ;  and  then  there  is  only  one,  not  two ;  and 
he  shows  up  but  once  on  a  voyage  —  the  night  be 
fore  the  ship  makes  port  —  the  night  when  they  have 
the  ' '  concert ' '  and  do  the  amateur  waitings  and 
recitations.  He  is  the  tenor,  as  a  rule. 
There  has  been  a  deal  of  cricket-playing  on  board ; 
it  seems  a  queer  game  for  a  ship,  but  they  enclose 
the  promenade  deck  with  nettings  and  keep  the  ball 
from  flying  overboard,  and  the  sport  goes  very  well, 
and  is  properly  violent  and  exciting.  .  .  .  We 
must  part  from  this  vessel  here. 

January  14..     Hotel  Bristol.     Servant   Brompy. 
2.. 


18  Following  the  Equator 

Alert,  gentle,  smiling,  winning  young  brown  creature 
as  ever  was.  Beautiful  shining  black  hair  combed 
back  like  a  woman's,  and  knotted  at  the  back  of  his 
head  —  tortoise-shell  comb  in  it,  sign  that  he  is  a 
Singhalese;  slender,  shapely  form ;  jacket;  under  it 
is  a  beltless  and  flowing  white  cotton  gown  —  from 
neck  straight  to  heel ;  he  and  his  outfit  quite  unmas- 
culine.  It  was  an  embarrassment  to  undress  before 
him. 

We  drove  to  the  market,  using  the  Japanese  jin- 
riksha  —  our  first  acquaintanceship  with  it.  It  is  a 
light  cart,  with  a  native  to  draw  it.  He  makes  good 
speed  for  half-an-hour,  but  it  is  hard  work  for  him ; 
he  is  too  slight  for  it.  After  the  half-hour  there  is  no 
more  pleasure  for  you ;  your  attention  is  all  on  the 
man,  just  as  it  would  be  on  a  tired  horse,  and  neces 
sarily  your  sympathy  is  there,  too.  There's  a  plenty 
of  these  'rickshas,  and  the  tariff  is  incredibly  cheap. 

I  was  in  Cairo  years  ago.  That  was  Oriental,  but 
there  was  a  lack.  When  you  are  in  Florida  or  New 
Orleans  you  are  in  the  South  —  that  is  granted  ;  but 
you  are  not  in  the  South;  you  are  in  a  modified 
South,  a  tempered  South.  Cairo  was  a  tempered 
Orient  —  an  Orient  with  an  indefinite  something 
wanting.  That  feeling  was  not  present  in  Ceylon. 
Ceylon  was  Oriental  in  the  last  measure  of  com 
pleteness —  utterly  Oriental;  also  utterly  tropical; 
and  indeed  to  one's  unreasoning  spiritual  sense 
the  two  things  belong  together.  All  the  requisites 
were  present.  The  costumes  were  right;  the  black 


Following  the  Equator  x  19 

and  brown  exposures,  unconscious  of  immodesty, 
were  right;  the  juggler  was  there,  with  his  basket, 
his  snakes,  his  mongoose,  and  his  arrangements  for 
growing  a  tree  from  seed  to  foliage  and  ripe  fruit 
age  before  one's  eyes;  in  sight  were  plants  and 
flowers  familiar  to  one  on  books  but  in  no  other  way 
—  celebrated,  desirable,  strange,  but  in  production 
restricted  to  the  hot  belt  of  the  equator ;  and  out  a 
little  way  in  the  country  were  the  proper  deadly 
snakes,  and  fierce  beasts  of  prey,  and  the  wild 
elephant  and  the  monkey.  And  there  was  that 
swoon  in  the  air  which  one  associates  with  the  tropics, 
and  that  smother  of  heat,  heavy  with  odors  of  un 
known  flowers,  and  that  sudden  invasion  of  purple 
gloom  fissured  with  lightnings, —  then  the  tumult  of 
crashing  thunder  and  the  downpour  —  and  presently 
all  sunny  and  smiling  again ;  all  these  things  were 
there ;  the  conditions  were  complete,  nothing  was 
lacking.  And  away  off  in  the  deeps  of  the  jungle 
and  in  the  remotenesses  of  the  mountains  were  the 
ruined  cities  and  mouldering  temples,  mysterious 
relics  of  the  pomps  of  a  forgotten  time  and  a  van 
ished  race  —  and  this  was  as  it  should  be,  also,  for 
nothing  is  quite  satisfyingly  Oriental  that  lacks  the 
somber  and  impressive  qualities  of  mystery  and 
antiquity. 

The  drive  through  the  town  and  out  to  the  Galle 
Face  by  the  seashore,  what  a  dream  it  was  of  tropical 
splendors  of  bloom  and  blossom,  and  Oriental  con 
flagrations  of  costume  !  The  walking  groups  of  men, 

B«* 


20  Following  the  Equator 


y(women,  boys,  girls,  babies  —  each  individual  was  a 
flame,  each  group  a  house  afire  for  color.  And 
such  stunning  colors,  such  intensely  vivid  colors, 
such  rich  and  exquisite  minglings  and  fusings  of 
rainbows  and  lightnings  !  And  all  harmonious,  all  in 
perfect  taste  ;  never  a  discordant  note  ;  never  a  color 
on  any  person  swearing  at  another  color  on  him  or 
failing  to  harmonize  faultlessly  with  the  colors  of 
any  group  the  wearer  might  join.  The  stuffs  were 
silk  —  thin,  soft,  delicate,  clinging;  and,  as  a  rule, 
each  piece  a  solid  color:  a  splendid  green,  a  splen 
did  blue,  a  splendid  yellow,  a  splendid  purple,  a 
splendid  ruby,  deep  and  rich  with  smouldering  fires 
—  they  swept  continuously  by  in  crowds  and  legions 
and  multitudes,  glowing,  flashing,  burning,  radiant; 
and  every  five  seconds  came  a  burst  of  blinding  red 
that  made  a  body  catch  his  breath,  and  filled  his 
heart  with  joy.  And  then,  the  unimaginable  grace 
of  those  costumes!  Sometimes  a  woman's  whole 
dress  was  but  a  scarf  wound  about  her  person  and 
her  head,  sometimes  a  man's  was  but  a  turban  and 
a  careless  rag  or  two  —  in  both  cases  generous  areas 
of  polished  dark  skin  showing  —  but  always  the 
arrangement  compelled  the  homage  of  the  eye  and 
made  the  heart  sing  for  gladness. 

I  can  see  it  to  this  day,  that  radiant  panorama, 
that  wilderness  of  rich  color,  that  incomparable 
dissolving-view  of  harmonious  tints,  and  lithe  half- 
covered  forms,  and  beautiful  brown  faces,  and 
gracious  and  graceful  gestures  and  attitudes  and 


Following  the  Equator  21 

movements,   free,  unstudied,  barren  of  stiffness  and 
restraint,   and  — 

Just  then,  into  this  dream  of  fairyland  and  para 
dise  a  grating  dissonance  was  injected.  Out  of  a 
missionary  school  came  marching,  two  and  two,  six 
teen  prim  and  pious  little  Christian  black  girls, 
Europeanly  clothed  —  dressed,  to  the  last  detail,  as 
they  would  have  been  dressed  on  a  summer  Sunday 
in  an  English  or  American  village.  Those  clothes 
—  oh,  they  were  unspeakably  ugly!  Ugly,  bar 
barous,  destitute  of  taste,  destitute  of  grace,  repul 
sive  as  a  shroud.  I  looked  at  my  women  folk's 
clothes — -just  full-grown  duplicates  of  the  outrages 
disguising  those  poor  little  abused  creatures  —  and 
was  ashamed  to  be  seen  in  the  street  with  them. 
Then  I  looked  at  my  own  clothes,  and  was  ashamed 
to  be  seen  in  the  street  with  myself. 

However,  we  must  put  up  with  our  clothes  as  they 
are  —  they  have  their  reason  for  existing.  They  are 
onjus  to  expose  us  —  to  advertise  what  we  wear  them 
to  conceal.  They  are  a  sign;  a  sign  of  insincerity; 
a  sign  of  suppressed  vanity ;  a  pretense  that  we  des 
pise  gorgeous  colors  and  the  graces  of  harmony  and 
form;  and  we  put  them  on  to  propagate  that  lie  and 
back  it  up.  But  we  do  not  deceive  our  neighbor;  I 
and  when  we  step  into  Ceylon  we  realize  that  we  j 
have  not  even  deceived  ourselves.  We  do  love  bril 
liant  colors  and  graceful  costumes ;  and  at  home  we 
will  turn  out  in  a  storm  to  see  them  when  the  proces 
sion  goes  by  —  and  envy  the  wearers.  We  go  to  the 


22  Following  the  Equator 

theater  to  look  at  them  and  grieve  that  we  can't  be 
clothed  like  that.  We  go  to  the  King's  ball,  when 
we  get  a  chance,  and  are  glad  of  a  sight  of  the  splen 
did  uniforms  and  the  glittering  orders.  When  we 
are  granted  permission  to  attend  an  imperial  draw 
ing-room  we  shut  ourselves  up  in  private  and  parade 
around  in  the  theatrical  court-dress  by  the  hour,  and 
admire  ourselves  in  the  glass,  and  are  utterly  happy; 
and  every  member  of  every  governor's  staff  in  demo 
cratic  America  does  the  same  with  his  grand  new 
uniform  —  and  if  he  is  not  watched  he  will  get  him 
self  photographed  in  it,  too.  When  I  see  the  Lord 
Mayor's  footman  I  am  dissatisfied  with  my  lot. 
Yes,  our  clothes  are  a  lie,  and  have  been  nothing 
short  of  that  these  hundred  years.  They  are  insin 
cere,  they  are  the  ugly  and  appropriate  outward  ex 
posure  of  an  inward  sham  and  a  moral  decay. 

The  last  little  brown  boy  I  chanced  to  notice  in  the 
crowds  and  swarms  of  Colombo  had  nothing  on  but 
a  twine  string  around  his  waist,  but  in  my  memory 
the  frank  honesty  of  his  costume  still  stands  out  in 
pleasant  contrast  with  the  odious  flummery  in  which 
the  little  Sunday-school  dowdies  were  masquerading. 


CHAPTER  II. 

Prosperity  is  the  best  protector  of  principle. 

—  Pudd'nkead  Wilsoris  New  Calendar. 

EVENING  — 7^/7*.  Sailed  in  the  Rosetta.  This 
is  a  poor  old  ship,  and  ought  to  be  insured 
and  sunk.  As  in  the  Oceana,  just  so  here:  every 
body  dresses  for  dinner;  they  make  it  a  sort  of 
pious  duty.  These  fine  and  formal  costumes  are  a 
rather  conspicuous  contrast  to  the  poverty  and 
shabbiness  of  the  surroundings.  ...  If  you 
want  a  slice  of  a  lime  at  four  o'clock  tea,  you  must 
sign  an  order  on  the  bar.  Limes  cost  14  cents  a 
barrel. 

January  18.  We  have  been  running  up  the 
Arabian  Sea,  latterly.  Closing  up  on  Bombay  now, 
and  due  to  arrive  this  evening. 

January  20.  Bombay !  A  bewitching  place, 
a  bewildering  place,  an  enchanting  place  —  the 
Arabian  Nights  come  again  !  It  is  a  vast  city;  con 
tains  about  a  million  inhabitants.  Natives,  they 
are,  with  a  slight  sprinkling  of  white  people  —  not 
enough  to  have  the  slightest  modifying  effect  upon 
the  massed  dark  complexion  of  the  public.  It  is 
winter  here,  yet  the  weather  is  the  divine  weather  of 
June,  and  the  foliage  is  the  fresh  and  heavenly 

(23) 


24  Following  the  Equator 

foliage  of  June.  There  is  a  rank  of  noble  great 
shade  trees  across  the  way  from  the  hotel,  and  under 
them  sit  groups  of  picturesque  natives  of  both  sexes ; 
aid  the  juggler  in  his  turban  is  there  with  his  snakes 
a  ad  his  magic ;  and  all  day  long  the  cabs  and  the  mul 
titudinous  varieties  of  costumes  flock  by.  It  does 
not  seem  as  if  one  could  ever  get  tired  of  watching 
this  moving  show,  this  shining  and  shifting  spectacle. 
In  the  great  bazar  the  pack  and  jam  of 
natives  was  marvelous,  the  sea  of  rich-colored  tur 
bans  and  draperies  an  inspiring  sight,  and  the  quaint 
and  showy  Indian  architecture  was  just  the  right 
setting  for  it.  Toward  sunset  another  show ;  this  is 
the  drive  around  the  seashore  to  Malabar  Point, 
where  Lord  Sandhurst,  the  Governor  of  the  Bombay 
Presidency,  lives.  Parsee  palaces  all  along  the  first 
part  of  the  drive ;  and  past  them  all  the  world  is 
driving ;  the  private  carriages  of  wealthy  Englishmen 
and  natives  of  rank  are  manned  by  a  driver  and 
three  footmen  in  stunning  oriental  liveries  —  two  of 
these  turbaned  statues  standing  up  behind,  as  fine  as 
monuments.  Sometimes  even  the  public  carriages 
have  this  superabundant  crew,  slightly  modified  — 
one  to  drive,  one  to  sit  by  and  see  it  done,  and  one 
to  stand  up  behind  and  yell  —  yell  when  there  is 
anybody  in  the  way,  and  for  practice  when  there 
isn't.  It  all  helps  to  keep  up  the  liveliness  and 
augment  the  general  sense  of  swiftness  and  energy 
and  confusion  and  pow-wow. 

In  the  region  of  Scandal  Point  —  felicitous  name 


Following  the  Equator  25 

—  where  there  are  handy  rocks  to  sit  on  and  a  noble 
view  of  the  sea  on  the  one  hand,  and  on  the  other 
the  passing  and  repassing  whirl  and  tumult  of  gay 
carriages,  are  great  groups  of  comfortably-off 
Parsee  women  —  perfect  flower-beds  of  brilliant 
color,  a  fascinating  spectacle.  Tramp,  tramp, 
tramping  along  the  road,  in  singles,  couples,  groups, 
and  gangs,  you  have  the  workingman  and  the 
workingwoman  —  but  not  clothed  like  ours. 
Usually  the  man  is  a  nobly-built  great  athlete,  with 
not  a  rag  on  but  his  loin-handkerchief;  his  color  a 
deep  dark  brown,  his  skin  satin,  his  rounded  muscles 
knobbing  it  as  if  it  had  eggs  under  it.  Usually  the 
woman  is  a  slender  and  shapely  creature,  as  erect  as 
a  lightning-rod,  and  she  has  but  one  thing  on  —  a 
bright-colored  piece  of  stuff  which  is  wound  about 
her  head  and  her  body  down  nearly  half-way  to  her 
knees,  and  which  clings  like  her  own  skin.  Her 
legs  and  feet  are  bare,  and  so  are  her  arms,  except 
for  her  fanciful  bunches  of  loose  silver  rings  on  her 
ankles  and  on  her  arms.  She  has  jewelry  bunched 
on  the  side  of  her  nose  also,  and  showy  cluster- 
rings  on  her  toes.  When  she  undresses  for  bed  she 
takes  off  her  jewelry,  I  suppose.  If  she  took  off 
anything  more  she  would  catch  cold.  As  a  rule, 
she  has  a  large  shiny  brass  water-jar  of  graceful 
shape  on  her  head,  and  one  of  her  naked  arms 
curves  up  and  the  hand  holds  it  there.  She  is  so 
straight,  so  erect,  and  she  steps  with  such  style,  and 
such  easy  grace  and  dignity  ;  and  her  curved  arm 

»       «  +s+      ^y?      fuod.     A,      lL.i<kl-*»      /•*     t& 


26  Following  the  Equator 

and  her  brazen  jar  are  such  a  help  to  the  picture  — 
indeed,  our  workingwomen  cannot  begin  with  her 
as  a  road  decoration. 

It  is  all  color,  bewitching  color,  enchanting  color 
—  everywhere  —  all  around  —  all  the  way  around  the 
curving  great  opaline  bay  clear  to  Government 
House,  where  the  turbaned  big  native  chuprassics 
stand  grouped  in  state  at  the  door  in  their  robes  of 
fiery  red,  and  do  most  properly  and  stunningly  finish 
up  the  splendid  show  and  make  it  theatrically  com 
plete.  I  wish  I  were  a  chuprassy. 

This  is  indeed  India;  the  land  of  dreams  and 
romance,  of  fabulous  wealth  and  fabulous  poverty, 
of  splendor  and  rags,  of  palaces  and  hovels,  of 
famine  and  pestilence,  of  genii  and  giants  and 
Aladdin  lamps,  of  tigers  and  elephants,  the  cobra 
and  the  jungle,  the  country  of  a  hundred  nations 
and  a  hundred  tongues,  of  a  thousand  religions  and 
two  million  gods,  cradle  of  the  human  race,  birth 
place  of  human  speech,  mother  of  history,  grand 
mother  of  legend,  great-grandmother  of  tradition, 
whose  yesterdays  bear  date  with  the  mouldering 
antiquities  of  the  rest  of  the  nations  —  the  one  sole 
country  under  the  sun  that  is  endowed  with  an  im 
perishable  interest  for  alien  prince  and  alien  peasant, 
for  lettered  and  ignorant,  wise  and  fool,  rich  and 
poor,  bond  and  free,  the  one  land  that  all  men 
desire  to  see,  and  having  seen  once,  by  even  a 
glimpse,  would  not  give  that  glimpse  for  the  shows 
of  all  the  rest  of  the  globe  combined. 


-  r 


Following  the  Equator  27 

Even  now,  after  the  lapse  of  a  year,  the  delirium 
of  those  days  in  Bombay  has  not  left  me,  and  I  hope 
never  will.  It  was  all  new,  no  detail  of  it  hack 
neyed.  And  India  did  not  wait  for  morning,  it 
began  at  the  hotel  —  straight  away.  The  lobbies 
and  halls  were  full  of  turbaned  and  fez'd  and  em 
broidered,  cap'd,  and  barefooted,  and  cotton-clad 
dark  natives,  some  of  them  rushing  about,  others  at 
rest  squatting,  or  sitting  on  the  ground ;  some  of 
them  chattering  with  energy,  others  still  and  dreamy; 
in  the  dining-room  every  man's  own  private  native 
servant  standing  behind  his  chair,  and  dressed  for  a 
part  in  the  Arabian  Nights. 

Our  rooms  were  high  up,  on  the  front.  A  white 
man  —  he  was  a  burly  German — -went  up  with  us, 
and  brought  three  natives  along  to  see  to  arranging 
things.  About  fourteen  others  followed  in  proces 
sion,  with  the  hand-baggage;  each  carried  an 
article  —  and  only  one;  a  bag,  in  some  cases,  in 
other  cases  less.  One  strong  native  carried  my 
overcoat,  another  a  parasol,  another  a  box  of  cigars, 
another  a  novel,  and  the  last  man  in  the  procession 
had  no  load  but  a  fan.  It  was  all  done  with  earnest 
ness  and  sincerity,  there  was  not  a  smile  in  the  pro 
cession  from  the  head  of  it  to  the  tail  of  it.  Each 
man  waited  patiently,  tranquilly,  in  no  sort  of 
hurry,  till  one  of  us  found  time  to  give  him  a  cop 
per,  then  he  bent  his  head  reverently,  touched  his 
forehead  with  his  fingers,  and  went  his  way.  They 
seemed  a  soft  and  gentle  race,  and  there  was  some- 


,^v  -^    ^- 

•,v/J'Y'^        I'M* 

28  Following  the  Equator 

thing    both    winning    and     touching     about     their 
demeanor. 

There  was  a  vast  glazed  door  which  opened  upon 
the  balcony.  It  needed  closing,  or  cleaning,  or 
something,  and  a  native  got  down  on  his  knees  and 
went  to  work  at  it.  He  seemed  to  be  doing  it  well 
enough,  but  perhaps  he  wasn't,  for  the  burly  Ger 
man  put  on  a  look  that  betrayed  dissatisfaction,  then 
without  explaining  what  was  wrong,  gave  the  native 
a  brisk  cuff  on  the  jaw  and  then  told  him  where  the 
defect  was.  It  seemed  such  a  shame  to  do  that 
before  us  all.  The  native  took  it  with  meekness, 
saying  nothing,  and  not  showing  in  his  face  or 
manner  any  resentment.  I  had  not  seen  the  like  of 
this  for  fifty  years.  It  carried  me  back  to  my  boy 
hood,  and  flashed  upon  me  the  forgotten  fact  that 
this  was  the  usual  way  of  explaining  one's  desires  to 
a  slave.  I  was  able  to  remember  that  the  method 
seemed  right  and  natural  to  me  in  those  days,  I 
being  born  to  it  and  unaware  that  elsewhere  there 
were  other  methods ;  but  I  was  also  able  to  remem 
ber  that  those  unresented  cuffings  made  me  sorry  for 
the  victim  and  ashamed  for  the  punisher.  My  father 
was  a  refined  and  kindly  gentleman,  very  grave, 
rather  austere,  of  rigid  probity,  a  sternly  just  and 
upright  man,  albeit  he  attended  no  church  and  never 
spoke  of  religious  matters,  and  had  no  part  nor  lot 
in  the  pious  joys  of  his  Presbyterian  family,  nor  ever 
seemed  to  suffer  from  this  deprivation.  He  laid  his 
hand  upon  me  in  punishment  only  twice  in  his  life, 


Following  the  Equator  29 

and  then  not  heavily ;  once  for  telling  him  a  lie  — 
which  surprised  me,  and  showed  me  how  unsuspi 
cious  he  was,  for  that  was  not  my  maiden  effort. 
He  punished  me  those  two  times  only,  and  never  any 
other  member  of  the  family  at  all ;  3  et  every  now 
and  then  he  cuffed  our  harmless  slave  boy,  Lewis, 
for  trifling  little  blunders  and  awkwardnesses.  My 
father  had  passed  his  life  among  the  slaves  from  his 
cradle  up,  and  his  cuffings  proceeded  from  the 
custom  of  the  time,  not  from  his  nature.  When  I 
was  ten  years  old  I  saw  a  man  fling  a  lump  of  iron- 
ore  at  a  slave-man  in  anger,  for  merely  doing  some 
thing  awkwardly  —  as  if  that  were  a  crime.  It 
bounded  from  the  man's  skull,  and  the  man  fell  and 
never  spoke  again.  He  was  dead  in  an  hour.  I 
knew  the  man  had  a  right  to  kill  his  slave  if  he 
wanted  to,  and  yet  it  seemed  a  pitiful  thing  and 
somehow  wrong,  though  why  wrong  I  was  not  deep 
enough  to  explain  if  I  had  been  asked  to  do  it. 
Nobody  in  the  village  approved  of  that  murder,  but 
of  course  no  one  said  much  about  it. 

It  is  curious  -—  the  space-annihilating  power  of 
thought.  For  just  one  second,  ail  that  goes  to  make 
the  me  in  me  was  in  a  Missourian  village,  on  the 
other  side  of  the  globe,  vividly  seeing  again  these 
forgotten  pictures  of  fifty  years  ago,  and  wholly  un 
conscious  of  all  things  but  just  those;  and  in  the 
next  second  I  was  back  in  Bombay,  and  that  kneel 
ing  native's  smitten  cheek  was  not  done  tingling  yet! 
Pack  to  boyhood  —  fifty  years;  back  to  age  again. 


30  Following  the  Equator 

another  fifty ;  and  a  flight  equal  to  the  circumference 
of  the  globe  —  all  in  two  seconds  by  the  watch ! 

Some  natives  —  I  don't  remember  how  many  — 
went  into  my  bedroom,  now,  and  put  things  to  rights 
and  arranged  the  mosquito-bar,  and  I  went  to  bed  to 
nurse  my  cough.  It  was  about  nine  in  the  evening. 
What  a  state  of  things !  For  three  hours  the  yelling 
and  shouting  of  natives  in  the  hall  continued,  along 
with  the  velvety  patter  of  their  swift  bare  feet  — 
what  a  racket  it  was !  They  were  yelling  orders  and 
messages  down  three  flights.  Why,  in  the  matter 
of  noise  it  amounted  to  a  riot,  an  insurrection,  a 
revolution.  And  then  there  were  other  noises  mixed 
up  with  these  and  at  intervals  tremendously  accent 
ing  them  —  roofs  falling  in,  I  judged,  windows 
smashing,  persons  being  murdered,  crows  squawk 
ing,  and  deriding,  and  cursing,  canaries  screeching, 
monkeys  jabbering,  macaws  blaspheming,  and  every 
.now  and  then  fiendish  bursts  of  laughter  and  explo 
sions  of  dynamite.  By  midnight  I  had  suffered  all 
the  different  kinds  of  shocks  there  are,  and  knew 
that  I  could  never  more  be  disturbed  by  them,  either 
isolated  or  in  combination .  Then  came  peace  — 
stillness  deep  and  solemn  —  and  lasted  till  five. 

Then  it  all  broke  loose  again.  And  who  re 
started  it?  The  Bird  of  Birds  —  the  Indian  crow. 
I  came  to  know  him  well,  by  and  by,  and  be  in 
fatuated  with  him.  I  suppose  he  is  the  hardest  lot 
that  wears  feathers.  Yes,  and  the  cheerfulest,  and 
the  best  satisfied  with  himself.  He  never  arrived  at 


Following  the  Equator  31 

what  he  is  by  any  careless  process,  or  any  sudden 
one;  he  is  a  work  of  art,  and  "art  is  long";  he 
is  the  product  of  immemorial  ages,  and  of  deep 
calculation;  one  can't  make  a  bird  like  that  in  a 
day.  He  has  been  re-incarnated  more  times  than 
Shiva ;  and  he  has  kept  a  sample  of  each  incarna 
tion,  and  fused  it  into  his  constitution.  In  the 
course  of  his  evolutionary  promotions,  his  sublime 
march  toward  ultimate  perfection,  he  has  been  a 
gambler,  a  low  comedian,  a  dissolute  priest,  a  fussy 
woman,  a  blackguard,  a  scoffer,  a  liar,  a  thief,  a 
spy,  an  informer,  a  trading  politician,  a  swindler, 
a  professional  hypocrite,  a  patriot  for  cash,  a  re 
former,  a  lecturer,  a  lawyer,  a  conspirator,  a  rebel, 
a  royalist,  a  democrat,  a  practicer  and  propagator  of 
irreverence,  a  meddler,  an  intruder,  a  busybody,  an 
infidel,  and  a  wallower  in  sin  for  the  mere  love  of  it. 
The  strange  result,  the  incredible  result,  of  this 
patient  accumulation  of  all  damnable  traits  is,  that 
he  does  not  know  what  care  is,  he.  ooes  not  know 
what  sorrow  is,  he  does  not  kno\v  what  remorse  is; 
his  life  is  one  long  thundering  ecstasy  of  happiness, 
and  ^c  -5vW.»^ 'tS  his  death  untroubled,  knowing 
that  he  will  soon  turn  up  again  as  an  author  or 
something,  and  be  even  more  intolerably  capable 
and  comfortable  than  ever  he  was  before. 

In  his  straddling  wide  forward-step,  and  his  springy 
sidewise  series  of  hops,  and  his  impudent  air,  and 
his  cunning  way  of  canting  his  head  to  one  side 
upon  occasion,  he  reminds  one  of  the  American 


32  Following  the  Equator 

blackbird.  But  the  sharp  resemblances  stop  there. 
He  is  much  bigger  than  the  blackbird ;  and  he  lacks 
the  blackbird's  trim  and  slender  and  beautiful  build 
and  shapely  beak ;  and  of  course  his  sober  garb  of  gray 
and  rusty  black  is  a  poor  and  humble  thing  compared 
with  the  splendid  luster  of  the  blackbird's  metallic 
sables  and  shifting  and  flashing  bronze  glories.  The 
blackbird  is  a  perfect  gentleman,  in  deportment  and 
attire,  and  is  not  noisy,  I  believe,  except  when  hold 
ing  religious  services  and  political  conventions  in  a 
tree;  but  this  Indian  sham  Quaker  is  just  a  rowdy, 
and  is  always  noisy  when  awake  —  always  chaffing, 
scolding,  scoffing,  laughing,  ripping,  and  cursing, 
and  carrying  on  about  something  or  other.  I  never 
saw  such  a  bird  for  delivering  opinions.  Nothing 
escapes  him ;  he  notices  everything  that  happens, 
and  brings  out  his  opinion  about  it,  particularly  if 
jf^c  ^  Batter  that  is  none  of  his  business.  And  it 

11    IS    cl    lie; 

is  never  a  n1^  Opim'on>  but  always  violent  —  violent 

and  profane tjie  Presence  °f  ladies  does  not  affect 

him.  His  opinion?  7"e  not  the  outcome  of  reflec 
tion,  for  he  never  thinks'^outtanything'  bu^  ^eaves 
out  the  opinion  that  is  on  top  VI  ^.JK&uv  and 
which  is  often  an  opinion  about  some  quite  different 
thing  and  does  not  fit  the  case.  But  that  is  his 
way ;  his  main  idea  is  to  get  out  an  opinion,  and  if 
he  stopped  to  think  he  would  lose  chances. 

I  suppose  he  has  no  enemies  among  men.  The 
whites  and  Mohammedans  never  seemed  to  molest 
him;  and  the  Hindoos,  because  of  their  religion, 


Following  the  Equator  33 

never  take  the  life  of  any  creature,  but  spare  even 
the  snakes  and  tigers  and  fleas  and  rats.  If  I  sat 
on  one  end  of  the  balcony,  the  crows  would  gather 
on  the  railing  at  the  other  end  and  talk  about  me ; 
and  edge  closer,  little  by  little,  till  I  could  almost 
reach  them ;  and  they  would  sit  there,  in  the  most 
unabashed  way,  and  talk  about  my  clothes,  and  my 
hair,  and  my  complexion,  and  probable  character 
and  vocation  and  politics,  and  how  I  came  to  be  in 
India,  and  what  I  had  been  doing,  and  how  many 
days  I  had  got  for  it,  and  how  I  had  happened  to  go 
unhanged  so  long,  and  when  would  it  probably  come 
off,  and  might  there  be  more  of  my  sort  where  I 
came  from,  and  when  would  they  be  hanged, — 
and  so  on,  and  so  on,  until  I  could  not  longer 
endure  the  embarrassment  of  it;  then  I  would 
shoo  them  away,  and  they  would  circle  around  in 
the  air  a  little  while,  laughing  and  deriding  and 
mocking,  and  presently  settle  on  the  rail  and  do 
it  all  over  again. 

They  were  very  sociable  when  there  was  anything 
to  eat  —  oppressively  so.  With  a  little  encourage 
ment  they  would  come  in  and  light  on  the  table  and 
help  me  eat  my  breakfast;  and  once  when  I  was  in 
the  other  room  and  they  found  themselves  alone, 
they  carried  off  everything  they  could  lift ;  and  they 
were  particular  to  choose  things  which  they  could 
make  no  use  of  after  they  got  them.  In  India  their 
number  is  beyond  estimate,  and  their  noise  is  in 
8«* 


34  Following  the  Equator 

proportion.  I  suppose  they  cost  the  country  more 
than  the  government  does ;  yet  that  is  not  a  light 
matter.  Still,  they  pay;  their  company  pays;  it 
would  sadden  the  land  to  take  their  cheerful  voice 
out  of  it. 


CHAPTER    III. 

By  trying  we  can  easily  learn  to  endure  adversity.    Another  man's,  I  mean. 
—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

YOU  soon  find  your  long-ago  dreams  of  India  ris 
ing  in  a  sort  of  vague  and  luscious  moonlight 
above  the  horizon-rim  of  your  opaque  conscious 
ness,  and  softly  lighting  up  a  thousand  forgotten 
details  which  were  parts  of  a  vision  that  had  once  been 
vivid  to  you  when  you  were  a  boy,  and  steeped 
your  spirit  in  tales  of  the  East.  The  barbaric  gor- 
geousnesses,  for  instance ;  and  the  princely  titles,  the 
sumptuous  titles,  the  sounding  titles, —  how  good 
they  taste  in  the  mouth  !  The  Nizam  of  Hydera 
bad  ;  the  Maharajah  of  Travancore ;  the  Nabob  of 
Jubbulpore;  the  Begum  of  Bhopal ;  the  Nawab 
of  Mysore ;  the  Ranee  of  Gulnare ;  the  Ahkoond 
of  Swat;  the  Rao  of  Rohilkund;  the  Gaikwar  of 
Baroda.  Indeed,  it  is  a  country  that  runs  richly  to 
name.  The  great  god  Vishnu  has  108  —  108  special 
ones — 1 08  peculiarly  holy  ones  —  names  just  for 
Sunday  use  only.  I  learned  the  whole  of  Vishnu's 
1 08  by  heart  once,  but  they  wouldn't  stay;  I  don't 
remember  any  of  them  now  but  John  W. 

c*»  (35) 


36  Following  the  Equator 

And  the  romances  connected  with  those  princely 
native  houses  —  to  this  day  they  are  always  turning 
up,  just  as  in  the  old,  old  times.  They  were  sweat 
ing  out  a  romance  in  an  English  court  in  Bombay  a 
while  before  we  were  there.  In  this  case  a  native 
prince,  i6*/£  years  old,  who  has  been  enjoying  his 
titles  and  dignities  and  estates  unmolested  for  four 
teen  years,  is  suddenly  haled  into  court  on  the  charge 
that  he  is  rightfully  no  prince  at  all,  but  a  pauper 
peasant ;  that  the  real  prince  died  when  two  and  one- 
half  years  old;  that  the  death  was  concealed,  and  a 
peasant  child  smuggled  into  the  royal  cradle,  and 
that  this  present  incumbent  was  that  smuggled  sub 
stitute.  This  is  the  very  material  that  so  many 
oriental  tales  have  been  made  of. 

The  case  of  that  great  prince,  the  Gaikwar  of 
Baroda,  is  a  reversal  of  the  theme.  When  that 
throne  fell  vacant,  no  heir  could  be  found  for  some 
time,  but  at  last  one  was  found  in  the  person  of  a 
peasant  child  who  was  making  mud  pies  in  a  village 
street,  and  having  an  innocent  good  time.  But  his 
pedigree  was  straight;  he  was  the  true  prince,  and  he 
has  reigned  ever  since,  with  none  to  dispute  his  right. 

Lately  there  was  another  hunt  for  an  heir  to  an 
other  princely  house,  and  one  was  found  who  was 
circumstanced  about  as  the  Gaikwar  had  been.  His 
fathers  were  traced  back,  in  humble  life,  along  a  branch 
of  the  ancestral  tree  to  the  point  where  it  joined  the 
stem  fourteen  generations  ago,  and  his  heirship  was 
thereby  squarely  established,  The  tracing  was  done 


Following  the  Equator  37 

by  means  of  the  records  of  one  of  the  great  Hindoo 
shrines,  where  princes  on  pilgrimage  record  their 
names  and  the  date  of  their  visit.  This  is  to  keep 
the  prince's  religious  account  straight,  and  his  spirit 
ual  person  safe ;  but  the  record  has  the  added  value 
of  keeping  the  pedigree  authentic,  too. 

When  I  think  of  Bombay  now,  at  this  distance  of 
time,  I  seem  to  have  a  kaleidoscope  at  my  eye;  and 
I  hear  the  clash  of  the  glass  bits  as  the  splendid 
figures  change,  and  fall  apart,  and  flash  into  new 
forms,  figure  after  figure,  and  with  the  birth  of  each 
new  form  I  feel  my  skin  crinkle  and  my  nerve-web 
tingle  with  a  new  thrill  of  wonder  and  delight. 
These  remembered  pictures  float  past  me  in  a 
sequence  of  contrasts ;  following  the  same  order 
always,  and  always  whirling  by  and  disappearing 
with  the  swiftness  of  a  dream,  leaving  me  with  the 
sense  that  the  actuality  was  the  experience  of  an 
hour,  at  most,  whereas  it  really  covered  days,  I 
think. 

The  series  begins  with  the  hiring  of  a  "bearer" 
—  native  maa-servant  —  a  person  who  should  be 
selected  with  some  care,  because  as  long  as  he  is  in 
your  employ  he  will  be  about  as  near  to  you  as  your 
clothes. 

In  India  your  day  may  be  said  to  begin  with  the 
"bearer's"  knock  on  the  bedroom  door,  accom 
panied  by  a  formula  of  words  —  a  formula  which  is 
intended  to  mean  that  the  bath  is  ready.  It  doesn't 
really  seem  to  mean  anything  at  all.  But  that  is  be 


38  Following  the  Equator 

cause  you  are  not  used  to  "  bearer  "  English.     You 
will  presently  understand. 

Where  he  gets  his  English  is  his  own  secret. 
There  is  nothing  like  it  elsewhere  in  the  earth;  or 
even  in  paradise,  perhaps,  but  the  other  place  is 
probably  full  of  it.  You  hire  him  as  soon  as  you 
touch  Indian  soil;  for  no  matter  what  your  sex  is, 
you  cannot  do  without  him.  He  is  messenger,  valet, 
chambermaid,  table-waiter,  lady's  maid,  courier  —  he 
is  everything.  He  carries  a  coarse  linen  clothes-bag 
and  a  quilt;  he  sleeps  on  the  stone  floor  outside 
your  chamber  door,  and  gets  his  meals  you  do  not 
know  where  nor  when  ;  you  only  know  that  he  is  not 
fed  on  the  premises,  either  when  you  are  in  a  hotel 
or  when  you  are  a  guest  in  a  private  house.  His 
wages  are  large  —  from  an  Indian  point  of  view  — 
and  he  feeds  and  clothes  himself  out  of  them.  We 
had  three  of  him  in  two  and  a  half  months.  The 
first  one's  rate  was  thirty  rupees  a  month  —  that  is 
to  say,  twenty-seven  cents  a  day;  the  rate  of  the 
others,  Rs.  40  (40  rupees)  a  month.  A  princely 
sum ;  for  the  native  switchman  on  a  railway  and  the 
native  servant  in  a  private  family  get  only  Rs.  7  per 
month,  and  the  farm-hand  only  4.  The  two  former 
feed  and  clothe  themselves  and  their  families  on  their 
$1.90  per  month;  but  I  cannot  believe  that  the 
farm-hand  has  to  feed  himself  on  his  $1.08.  I  think 
the  farm  probably  feeds  him,  and  that  the  whole  of 
his  wages,  except  a  trifle  for  the  priest,  goes  to  the 
support  of  his  family.  That  is,  to  the  feeding  of 


. 
Following  the  Equator  39 

his  family  ;  for  they  live  in  a  mud  hut,  hand-made, 
and,  doubtless,  rent-free,  and  they  wear  no  clothes; 
at  least,  nothing  more  than  a  rag.  And  not  much 
of  a  rag  at  that,  in  the  case  of  the  males.  However, 
these  are  handsome  times  for  the  farm-hand  ;  he 
was  not  always  the  child  of  luxury  that  he  is  now. 
The  Chief  Commissioner  of  the  Central  Provinces, 
in  a  recent  official  utterance  wherein  he  was  rebuk 
ing  a  native  deputation  for  complaining  of  hard 
times,  reminded  them  that  they  could  easily  remem 
ber  when  a  farm-hand's  wages  were  only  half  a  rupee 
(former  value)  a  month  —  that  is  to  say,  less  than 
a  cent  a  day;  nearly  $2.90  a  year.  If  such  a  wage- 
earner  had  a  good  deal  of  a  family  —  and  they  all 
have  that,  for  God  is  very  good  to  these  poor  natives 
in  some  ways  —  he  would  save  a  profit  of  fifteen 
cents,  clean  and  clear,  out  of  his  year's  toil;  I  mean 
a  frugal,  thrifty  person  would,  not  one  given  to  dis 
play  and  ostentation.  And  if  he  owed  $13.50  and 
took  good  care  of  his  health,  he  could  pay  it  off  in 
ninety  years.  Then  he  could  hold  up  his  head  and 
look  his  creditors  in  the  face  again. 

Think  of  these  facts  and  what  they  mean.  India 
does  not  consist  of  cities.  There  are  no  cities  in 
India  —  to  speak  of.  Its  stupendous  population 
consists  of  farm-laborers.  India  is  one  vast  farm 
—  one  almost  interminable  stretch  of  fields  with  mud 
fences  between.  Think  of  the  above  facts;  and 
consider  what  an  incredible  aggregate  of  poverty 
they  place  before  you. 


40  Following  the  Equator 

The  first  Bearer  that  applied  waited  below  and 
sent  up  his  recommendations.  That  was  the  first 
morning  in  Bombay.  We  read  them  over;  care 
fully,  cautiously,  thoughtfully.  There  was  not  a 
fault  to  find  with  them  —  except  one;  they  were  all 
from  Americans.  Is  that  a  slur?  If  it  is,  it  is  a  de 
served  one.  In  my  experience,  an  American's  rec 
ommendation  of  a  servant  is  not  usually  valuable. 
We  are  too  good-natured  a  race ;  we  hate  to  say  the 
unpleasant  thing;  we  shrink  from  speaking  the  un 
kind  truth  about  a  poor  fellow  whose  bread  depends 
upon  our  verdict;  so  we  speak  cf  his  good  points 
only,  thus  not  scrupling  to  tell  a  lie  —  a  silent  lie  — 
for  in  not  mentioning  his  bad  ones  we  as  good  as 
say  he  hasn't  any.  The  only  difference  that  I  know 
of  between  a  silent  lie  and  a  spoken  one  is,  that  the 
silent  lie  is  a  less  respectable  one  than  the  other. 
And  it  can  deceive,  whereas  the  other  can't  —  as  a 
rule.  We  not  only  tell  the  silent  lie  as  to  a  servant's 
faults,  but  we  sin  in  another  way:  we  overpraise  his 
merits ;  for  when  it  comes  to  writing  recommenda 
tions  of  servants  we  are  a  nation  of  gushers.  And 
we  have  not  the  Frenchman's  excuse.  In  France 
you  must  give  the  departing  servant  a  good  recom 
mendation;  and  you  must  conceal  his  faults;  you 
have  no  choice.  If  you  mention  his  faults  for  the 
protection  of  the  next  candidate  for  his  services,  he 
can  sue  you  for  damages ;  and  the  court  will  award 
them,  too;  and,  moreover,  the  judge  will  give  you  a 
sharp  dressing-down  from  the  bench  for  trying  to 


Following  the  Equator  41 

destroy  a  poor  man's  character  and  rob  him  of  his 
bread.  I  do  not  state  this  on  my  own  authority,  I 
got  it  from  a  French  physician  of  fame  and  repute 
—  a  man  who  was  born  in  Paris,  and  had  practiced 
there  all  his  life.  And  he  said  that  he  spoke  not 
merely  from  common  knowledge,  but  from  exasper 
ating  personal  experience. 

As  I  was  saying,  the  Bearer's  recommenda 
tions  were  all  from  American  tourists;  and  St. 
Peter  would  have  admitted  him  to  the  fields  of 
the  blest  on  them  —  I  mean  if  he  is  as  unfamiliar 
with  our  people  and  our  ways  as  I  suppose  he 
is.  According  to  these  recommendations,  Manuel 
X.  was  supreme  in  all  the  arts  connected  with 
his  complex  trade ;  and  these  manifold  arts  were 
mentioned  —  and  praised  —  in  detail.  His  English 
was  spoken  of  in  terms  of  warm  admiration  — 
admiration  verging  upon  rapture.  I  took  pleased 
note  of  that,  and  hoped  that  some  of  it  might  be 
true. 

We  had  to  have  some  one  right  away;  so  the 
family  went  down  stairs  and  took  him  a  week  on 
trial ;  then  sent  him  up  to  me  and  departed  on  their 
affairs.  I  was  shut  up  in  my  quarters  with  a  bron 
chial  cough,  and  glad  to  have  something  fresh  to 
look  at,  something  new  to  play  with.  Manuel  filled 
the  bill ;  Manuel  was  very  welcome.  He  was  toward 
fifty  years  old,  tall,  slender,  with  a  slight  stoop  —  an 
artificial  stoop,  a  deferential  stoop,  a  stoop  rigidified 
by  long  habit  —  with  face  of  European  mould ;  short 


42  Following  the  Equator 

hair,  intensely  black ;  gentle  black  eyes,  timid  black 
eyes,  indeed ;  complexion  very  dark,  nearly  black  in 
fact;  face  smooth-shaven.  He  was  bareheaded  and 
barefooted,  and  was  never  otherwise  while  his  week 
with  us  lasted;  his  clothing  was  European,  cheap, 
flimsy,  and  showed  much  wear. 

He  stood  before  me  and  inclined  his  head  (and 
body)  in  the  pathetic  Indian  way,  touching  his  fore 
head  with  the  finger-ends  of  his  right  hand,  in  salute. 
I  said : 

"  Manuel,  you  are  evidently  Indian,  but  you  seem 
to  have  a  Spanish  name  when  you  put  it  all  together. 
How  is  that?" 

A  perplexed  look  gathered  in  his  face;  it  was 
plain  that  he  had  not  understood  —  but  he  didn't  let 
on.  He  spoke  back  placidly: 

44  Name,  Manuel.     Yes,  master." 

"  I  know;  but  how  did  you  get  the  name?  " 

44  Oh,  yes,  I  suppose.  Think  happen  so.  Father 
same  name,  not  mother." 

I  saw  that  I  must  simplify  my  language  and  spread 
my  words  apart,  if  I  would  be  understood  by  this 
English  scholar. 

4  Well  —  then  —  how  —  did  —  your  —  father  — 
get  — -  his  —  name  ?  ' ' 

44  Oh,  he  " — brightening  a  little  —  4'  he  Christian 
—  Portygee ;  live  in  Goa ;  I  born  Goa ;  mother  not 
Portygee,  mother  native  —  high-caste  Brahmin  — 
Coolin  Brahmin;  highest  caste;  no  other  so  high 
caste.  I  high-caste  Brahmin,  too.  Christian,  too, 


Following  the  Equator  43 

same  like  father;  high-caste  Christian  Brahmin,  mas 
ter —  Salvation  Army." 

All  this  haltingly,  and  with  difficulty.  Then  he 
had  an  inspiration,  and  began  to  pour  out  a  flood  of 
words  that  I  could  make  nothing  of;  so  I  said: 

"There  —  don't  do  that.  I  can't  understand 
Hindcstani." 

11  Not  Hindostani,  master — English.  Always  I 
speaking  English  sometimes  when  I  talking  every  day 
all  the  time  at  you." 

"  Very  well,  stick  to  that;  that  is  intelligible.  It 
is  not  up  to  my  hopes,  it  is  not  up  to  the  promise 
of  the  recommendations,  still  it  is  English,  and  I 
understand  it.  Don't  elaborate  it;  I  don't  like 
elaborations  when  they  are  crippled  by  uncertainty 
of  touch." 

'  'Master?" 

"  Oh,  never  mind ;  it  was  only  a  random  thought; 
I  didn't  expect  you  to  understand  it.  How  did  you 
get  your  English ;  is  it  an  acquirement,  or  just  a  gift 
of  God?" 

After  some  hesitation  —  piously: 
'Yes,  he  very  good.  Christian  god  very  good; 
Hindoo  god  very  good,  too.  Two  million  Hindoo 
god,  one  Christian  god  —  make  two  million  and  one. 
All  mine;  two  million  and  one  god.  I  got  a  plenty. 
Sometime  I  pray  all  time  at  those,  keep  it  up,  go 
all  time  every  day;  give  something  at  shrine,  all 
good  for  me,  make  me  better  man ;  good  for  me, 
good  for  my  family,  dam  good." 


44  Following  the  Equator 

Then  he  had  another  inspiration,  and  went 
rambling  off  into  fervent  confusions  and  inco- 
herencies,  and  I  had  to  stop  him  again.  I  thought 
we  had  talked  enough,  so  I  told  him  to  go  to  the 
bathroom  and  clean  it  up  and  remove  the  slops  — 
this  to  get  rid  of  him.  He  went  away,  seeming  to 
understand,  and  got  out  some  of  my  clothes  and 
began  to  brush  them.  I  repeated  my  desire  several 
times,  simplifying  and  re-simplifying  it,  and  at  last 
he  got  the  idea.  Then  he  went  away  and  put  a 
coolie  at  the  work,  and  explained  that  he  would  lose 
caste  if  he  did  it  himself;  it  would  be  pollution,  by 
the  law  of  his  caste,  and  it  would  cost  him  a  deal  of 
fuss  and  trouble  to  purify  himself  and  accomplish 
his  rehabilitation.  He  said  that  that  kind  of  work 
was  strictly  forbidden  to  persons  of  caste,  and  as 
strictly  restricted  to  the  very  bottom  layer  of  Hindoo 
society  —  the  despised  Sudra  (the  toiler,  the 
laborer).  He  was  right;  and  apparently  the  poor 
Sudra  has  been  content  with  his  strange  lot,  his  in 
sulting  distinction,  for  ages  and  ages  —  clear  back 
to  the  beginning  of  things,  so  to  speak.  Buckle 
says  that  his  name  —  laborer — is  a  term  of  con 
tempt;  that  it  is  ordained  by  the  Institutes  of  Menu 
(900  B.C.)  that  if  a  Sudra  sit  on  a  level  with  his 
superior  he  shall  be  exiled  or  branded  *  .  .  .  ; 
if  he  speak  contemptuously  of  his  superior  or  insult 
him  he  shall  suffer  death  ;  if  he  listen  to  the  reading 

*  Without  going  into  particulars,  I  will  remark  that,  as  a  rule,  they 
wear  no  clothing  that  would  conceal  the  brand. —  M.  T. 


Following  the  Equator  45 

of  the  sacred  books  he  shall  have  burning  oil  poured 
in  his  ears ;  if  he  memorize  passages  from  them  he 
shall  be  killed ;  if  he  marry  his  daughter  to  a 
Brahmin  the  husband  shall  go  to  hell  for  defiling 
himself  by  contact  with  a  woman  so  infinitely  his  in 
ferior ;  and  that  it  is  forbidden  to  a  Sudra  to  acquire 
wealth.  "The  bulk  of  the  population  of  India," 
says  Buckle*  "is  the  Sudras  —  the  workers,  the 
farmers,  the  creators  of  wealth  " 

Manuel  was  a  failure,  poor  old  fellow.  His  age 
was  against  him.  He  was  desperately  slow  and 
phenomenally  forgetful.  When  he  went  three 
blocks  on  an  errand  he  would  be  gone  two  hours, 
and  then  forget  what  it  was  he  went  for.  When  he 
packed  a  trunk  it  took  him  forever,  and  the  trunk's 
contents  were  an  unimaginable  chaos  when  he  got 
done.  He  couldn't  wait  satisfactorily  at  table  —  a 
prime  defect,  for  if  you  haven't  your  own  servant  in 
an  Indian  hotel  you  are  likely  to  have  a  slow  time  of 
it  and  go  away  hungry.  We  couldn't  understand  his 
English;  he  couldn't  understand  ours;  and  when 
we  found  that  he  couldn't  understand  his  own,  it 
seemed  time  for  us  to  part.  I  had  to  discharge  him ; 
there  was  no  help  for  it.  But  I  did  it  as  kindly  as  I 
could,  and  as  gently.  We  must  part,  said  I,  but  I 
hoped  we  should  meet  again  in  a  better  world.  It 
was  not  true,  but  it  was  only  a  little  thing  to  say, 
and  saved  his  feelings  and  cost  me  nothing. 

But  now  that  he  was  gone,  and  was  off  my  mind 

*  Population  to-day,  300,000,000. 

„** 


46  Following  the  Equator 

and  heart,  my  spirits  began  to  rise  at  once,  and  I 
was  soon  feeling  brisk  and  ready  to  go  out  and  have 
adventures.  Then  his  newly-hired  successor  flitted 
in,  touched  his  forehead,  and  began  to  fly  around 
here,  there,  and  everywhere,  on  his  velvet  feet,  and 
in  five  minutes  he  had  everything  in  the  room  "  ship 
shape  and  Bristol  fashion,"  as  the  sailors  say,  and 
was  standing  at  the  salute,  waiting  for  orders.  Dear 
me,  what  a  rustler  he  was  after  the  slumbrous  way 
of  Manuel,  poor  old  slug !  All  my  heart,  all  my 
affection,  all  my  admiration,  went  out  spontaneously 
to  this  frisky  little  forked  black  thing,  this  compact 
and  compressed  incarnation  of  energy  and  force  and 
promptness  and  celerity  and  confidence,  this  smart, 
smily,  engaging,  shiny-eyed  little  devil,  feruled  on 
his  upper  end  by  a  gleaming  fire-coal  of  a  fez  with 
a  red-hot  tassel  dangling  from  it.  I  said,  with  deep 
satisfaction : 

"  You'll  suit.     What  is  your  name?  " 

He  reeled  it  mellowly  off. 

"  Let  me  see  if  I  can  make  a  selection  out  of  it  — 
for  business  uses,  I  mean ;  we  will  keep  the  rest  for 
Sundays.  Give  it  to  me  in  installments." 

He  did  it.  But  there  did  not  seem  to  be  any  short 
ones,  except  Mousa  —  which  suggested  mouse.  It 
was  out  of  character ;  it  was  too  soft,  too  quiet,  too 
conservative;  it  didn't  fit  his  splendid  style.  I  con 
sidered,  and  said : 

"  Mousa  is  short  enough,  but  I  don't  quite  like  it. 
It  seems  colorless  —  inharmonious  —  inadequate; 


Following  the  Equator  47 

and  I  am  sensitive  to  such  things.  How  do  you 
think  Satan  would  do?  " 

"  Yes,  master.     Satan  do  wair  good." 

It  was  his  way  of  saying  *'  very  good." 

There  was  a  rap  at  the  door.  Satan  covered  the 
ground  with  a  single  skip ;  there  was  a  word  or  two 
of  Hindostani,  then  he  disappeared.  Three  minutes 
later  he  was  before  me  again,  militarily  erect,  and 
waiting  for  me  to  speak  first. 

"What  is    it,  Satan?" 

'*  God  want  to  see  you." 

"  Who?" 

11  God.     I  show  him  up,  master?" 

"  Why,  this  is  so  unusual,  that  —  that  —  well,  you 
see  —  indeed  I  am  so  unprepared  —  I  don't  quite 
know  what  I  do  mean.  Dear  me,  can't  you  ex 
plain?  Don't  you  see  that  this  is  a  most  ex — " 

"  Here  his  card,  master." 

Wasn't  it  curious  —  and  amazing,  and  tremendous, 
and  all  that?  Such  a  personage  going  around  call 
ing  on  such  as  I,  and  sending  up  his  card,  like  a 
mortal  —  sending  it  up  by  Satan.  It  was  a  bewilder 
ing  collision  of  the  impossibles.  But  this  was  the 
land  of  the  Arabian  Nights,  this  was  India!  and 
what  is  it  that  cannot  happen  in  India? 

We  had  the  interview.  Satan  was  right  —  the 
Visitor  was  indeed  a  God  in  the  conviction  of  his 
multitudinous  followers,  and  was  worshiped  by  them 
in  sincerity  and  humble  adoration.  They  are 
troubled  by  no  doubts  as  to  his  divine  origin  and 


48  Following  the  Equator 

office.  They  believe  in  him,  they  pray  to  him,  they 
make  offerings  to  him,  they  beg  of  him  remission  of 
sins;  to  them  his  person,  together  with  everything 
connected  with  it,  is  sacred ;  from  his  barber  they 
buy  the  parings  of  his  nails  and  set  them  in  gold, 
and  wear  them  as  precious  amulets. 

I  tried  to  seem  tranquilly  conversational  and  at 
rest,  but  I  was  not.  Would  you  have  been?  I  was 
in  a  suppressed  frenzy  of  excitement  and  curiosity 
and  glad  wonder.  I  could  not  keep  my  eyes  off 
him.  I  was  looking  upon  a  god,  an  actual  god,  a 
recognized  and  accepted  god  ;  and  every  detail  of  his 
person  and  his  dress  had  a  consuming  interest  for 
me.  And  the  thought  went  floating  through  my 
head,  "  He  is  worshiped  —  think  of  it  —  he  is  not  a 
recipient  of  the  pa.e  homage  called  compliment, 
wherewith  the  highest  human  clay  must  make  shift  to 
be  satisfied,  but  of  an  infinitely  richer  spiritual  food : 
adoration,  worship  !  —  men  and  women  lay  their 
cares  and  their  griefs  and  their  broken  hearts  at  his 
feet;  and  he  gives  them  his  peace,  and  they  go 
away  healed." 

And  just  then  the  Awful  Visitor  said,  in  the 
simplest  way: 

"There  is  a  feature  of  the  philosophy  of  Huck 
Finn  which" — and  went  luminously  on  with  the 
construction  of  a  compact  and  nicely-discriminated 
literary  verdict. 

It  is  a  land  of  surprises  —  India  !  I  had  had  my 
ambitions — I  had  hoped,  and  almost  expected,  to 


Following  the  Equator  49 

be  read  by  kings  and  presidents  and  emperors  — 
but  I  had  never  looked  so  high  as  That.  It  would  be 
false  modesty  to  pretend  that  I  was  not  inordinately 
pleased.  I  was.  I  was  much  more  pleased  than 
I  should  have  been  with  a  compliment  from  a  man. 

He  remained  half  an  hour,  and  I  found  him  a  most 
courteous  and  charming  gentleman.  The  godship 
has  been  in  his  family  a  good  while,  but  I  do  not 
know  how  long.  He  is  a  Mohammedan  deity;  by 
earthly  rank  he  is  a  prince;  not  an  Indian  but  a 
Persian  prince.  He  is  a  direct  descendant  of  the 
Prophet's  line.  He  is  comely;  also  young — for  a 
god ;  not  forty,  perhaps  not  above  thirty-five  years 
old.  He  wears  his  immense  honors  with  tranquil 
grace,  and  with  a  dignity  proper  to  his  awful  calling. 
He  speaks  English  with  the  ease  and  purity  of  a 
person  born  to  it.  I  think  I  am  not  overstating  this. 
He  was  the  only  god  I  had  ever  seen,  and  I  was 
very  favorably  impressed.  When  he  rose  to  say 
good-bye,  the  door  swung  open  and  I  caught  the 
flash  of  a  red  fez,  and  heard  these  words,  reverently 
said: 

**  Satan  see  God  out?  " 

'Yes/*  And  these  mis-mated  Beings  passed 
from  view  —  Satan  in  the  lead  and  The  Other 
following  after. 


CHAPTER   IV. 

Few  of  us  can  stand  prosperity.    Another  man's  I  mean. 

—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  next  picture  in  my  mind  is  Government 
House,  on  Malabar  Point,  with  the  wide  sea 
view  from  the  windows  and  broad  balconies ;  abode 
of  His  Excellency  the  Governor  of  the  Bombay 
Presidency  —  a  residence  which  is  European  in 
everything  but  the  native  guards  and  servants,  and 
is  a  home  and  a  palace  of  state  harmoniously 
combined. 

That  was  England,  the  English  power,  the  Eng 
lish  civilization,  the  modern  civilization  —  with  the 
quiet  elegancies  and  quiet  colors  and  quiet  tastes 
and  quiet  dignity  that  are  the  outcome  of  the  modern 
cultivation.  And  following  it  came  a  picture  of  the 
ancient  civilization  of  India  — an  hour  in  the  mansion 
of  a  native  prince :  Kumar  Schri  Samatsinhji  Baha 
dur  of  the  Palitana  State. 

The  young  lad,  his  heir,  was  with  the  prince; 
also,  the  lad's  sister,  a  wee  brown  sprite,  very  pretty, 
very  serious,  very  winning,  delicately  moulded,  cos 
tumed  like  the  daintiest  butterfly,  a  dear  little  fairy 
land  princess,  gravely  willing  to  be  friendly  with  the 

(50> 


Following  the  Equator  51 

strangers,  but  in  the  beginning  preferring  to  hold  her 
father's  hand  until  she  could  take  stock  of  them  and 
determine  how  far  they  were  to  be  trusted.  She 
must  have  been  eight  years  old ;  so  in  the  natural 
(Indian)  order  of  things  she  would  be  a  bride  in 
three  or  four  years  from  now,  and  then  this  free 
contact  with  the  sun  and  the  air  and  the  other 
belongings  of  outdoor  nature  and  comradeship  with 
visiting  male  folk  would  end,  and  she  would  shut 
herself  up  in  the  zenana  for  life,  like  her  mother, 
and  by  inherited  habit  of  mind  would  be  happy  in 
that  seclusion  and  not  look  upon  it  as  an  irksome 
restraint  and  a  weary  captivity. 

The  game  which  the  prince  amuses  his  leisure 
with  —  however,  never  mind  it,  I  should  never  be 
able  to  describe  it  intelligibly.  I  tried  to  get  an 
idea  of  it  while  my  wife  and  daughter  visited  the 
princess  in  the  zenana,  a  lady  of  charming  graces 
and  a  fluent  speaker  of  English,  but  I  did  not  make 
it  out.  It  is  a  complicated  game,  and  I  believe  it  is 
said  that  nobody  can  learn  to  play  it  well  but  an 
Indian.  And  I  was  not  able  to  learn  how  to  wind  a 
turban.  It  seemed  a  simple  art  and  easy;  but  that 
was  a  deception.  It  is  a  piece  of  thin,  delicate 
stuff  a  foot  wide  or  more,  and  forty  or  fifty  feet 
long;  and  the  exhibitor  of  the  art  takes  one  end  of 
it  in  his  two  hands,  and  winds  it  in  and  out  intri 
cately  about  his  head,  twisting  it  as  he  goes,  and  in 
a  minute  or  two  the  thing  is  finished,  and  is  neat 
and  symmetrical  and  fits  as  snugly  as  a  mould. 


52  Following  the  Equator 

We  were  interested  in  the  wardrobe  and  the 
jewels,  and  in  the  silverware,  and  its  grace  of  shape 
and  beauty  and  delicacy  of  ornamentation.  The 
silverware  is  kept  locked  up,  except  at  meal-times, 
and  none  but  the  chief  butler  and  the  prince  have 
keys  to  the  safe.  I  did  not  clearly  understand  why, 
but  it  was  not  for  the  protection  of  the  silver.  It 
was  either  to  protect  the  prince  from  the  contamina 
tion  which  his  caste  would  suffer  if  the  vessels  were 
touched  by  low-caste  hands,  or  it  was  to  protect  his 
highness  from  poison.  Possibly  it  was  both.  I 
believe  a  salaried  taster  has  to  taste  everything  be 
fore  the  prince  ventures  it  —  an  ancient  and  judicious 
custom  in  the  East,  which  has  thinned  out  the  tasters 
a  good  deal,  for  of  course  it  is  the  cook  that  puts 
the  poison  in.  If  I  were  an  Indian  prince  I  would 
not  go  to  the  expense  of  a  taster,  I  would  eat  with 
the  cOok. 

Ceremonials  are  always  interesting;  and  I  noted 
that  the  Indian  good-morning  is  a  ceremonial, 
whereas  ours  doesn't  amount  to  that.  In  salutation 
the  son  reverently  touches  the  father's  forehead  with 
a  small  silver  implement  tipped  with  vermilion  paste 
which  leaves  a  red  spot  there,  and  in  return  the  son 
receives  the  father's  blessing.  Our  good-morning 
is  well  enough  for  the  rowdy  West,  perhaps,  but 
would  be  too  brusque  for  the  soft  and  ceremonious 
East. 

After  being  properly  necklaced,  according  to  cus 
tom,  with  great  garlands  made  of  yellow  flowers,  and 


Following  the  Equator  53 

provided  with  betel-nut  to  chew,  this  pleasant  visit 
closed,  and  we  passed  thence  to  a  scene  of  a  differ 
ent  sort:  from  this  glow  of  color  and  this  sunny  life 
to  those  grim  receptacles  of  the  Parsee  dead,  the 
Towers  of  Silence.  There  is  something  stately 
about  that  name,  and  an  impressiveness  which  sinks 
deep ;  the  hush  of  death  is  in  it.  We  have  the 
Grave,  the  Tomb,  the  Mausoleum,  God's  Acre,  the 
Cemetery;  and  association  has  made  them  eloquent 
with  solemn  meaning ;  but  we  have  no  name  that  is 
so  majestic  as  that  one,  or  lingers  upon  the  ear 
with  such  deep  and  haunting  pathos. 

On  lofty  ground,  in  the  midst  of  a  paradise  of 
tropical  foliage  and  flowers,  remote  from  the  world 
and  its  turmoil  and  noise,  they  stood  —  the  Towers 
of  Silence ;  and  away  below  were  spread  the  wide 
groves  of  cocoa  palms,  then  the  city,  mile  on  mile, 
then  the  ocean  with  its  fleets  of  creeping  ships  —  all 
steeped  in  a  stillness  as  deep  as  the  hush  that 
hallowed  this  high  place  of  the  dead.  The  vultures 
were  there.  They  stood  close  together  in  a  great 
circle  all  around  the  rim  of  a  massive  low  tower  — 
waiting;  stood  as  motionless  as  sculptured  orna 
ments,  and  indeed  almost  deceived  one  into  the 
belief  that  that  was  what  they  were.  Presently 
there  was  a  slight  stir  among  the  score  of  persons 
present,  and  all  moved  reverently  out  of  the  path 
and  ceased  from  talking.  A  funeral  procession  en 
tered  the  great  gate,  marching  two  and  two,  and 
moved  silently  by,  toward  the  Tower.  The  corpse  lay 


54  Following  the  Equator 

in  a  shallow  shell,  and  was  under  cover  of  a  white 
cloth,  but  was  otherwise  naked.  The  bearers  of  the 
body  were  separated  by  an  interval  of  thirty  feet 
from  the  mourners.  They,  and  also  the  mourners, 
were  draped  all  in  pure  white,  and  each  couple  of 
mourners  was  figuratively  bound  together  by  a  piece 
of  white  rope  or  a  handkerchief  —  though  they 
merely  held  the  ends  of  it  in  their  hands.  Behind 
the  procession  followed  a  dog,  which  was  led  in  a 
leash.  When  the  mourners  had  reached  the  neigh 
borhood  of  the  Tower — neither  they  nor  any  other 
human  being  but  the  bearers  of  the  dead  must  ap 
proach  within  thirty  feet  of  it  —  they  turned  and 
went  back  to  one  of  the  prayerhouses  within  the 
gates,  to  pray  for  the  spirit  of  their  dead.  The 
bearers  unlocked  the  Tower's  sole  door  and  disap 
peared  from  view  within.  In  a  little  while  they 
came  out  bringing  the  bier  and  the  white  covering- 
cloth,  and  locked  the  door  again.  Then  the  ring  of 
vultures  rose,  flapping  their  wings,  and  swooped 
down  into  the  Tower  to  devour  the  body.  Nothing 
was  left  of  it  but  a  clean-picked  skeleton  when  they 
flocked  out  again  a  few  minutes  afterward. 

The  principle  which  underlies  and  orders  every 
thing  connected  with  a  Parsee  funeral  is  Purity.  By 
the  tenets  of  the  Zoroastrian  religion,  the  elements, 
Earth,  Fire,  and  Water,  are  sacred,  and  must  not  be 
contaminated  by  contact  with  a  dead  body.  Hence 
corpses  must  not  be  burned,  neither  must  they  be 
buried.  None  may  touch  the  dead  or  enter  the 


Following  the  Equator  55 

Towers  where  they  repose  except  certain  men  who 
are  officially  appointed  for  that  purpose.  They 
receive  high  pay,  but  theirs  is  a  dismal  life,  for  they 
must  live  apart  from  their  species,  because  their 
commerce  with  the  dead  defiles  them,  and  any  who 
should  associate  with  them  would  share  their  defile 
ment.  When  they  come  out  of  the  Tower  the 
clothes  they  are  wearing  are  exchanged  for  others, 
in  a  building  within  the  grounds,  and  the  ones  which 
they  have  taken  off  are  left  behind,  for  they  are 
contaminated,  and  must  never  be  used  again  or 
suffered  to  go  outside  the  grounds.  These  bearers 
come  to  every  funeral  in  new  garments.  So  far  as 
is  known,  no  human  being,  other  than  an  official 
corpse-bearer  —  save  one  —  has  ever  entered  a 
Tower  of  Silence  after  its  consecration.  Just  a 
hundred  years  ago  a  European  rushed  in  behind  the 
bearers  and  fed  his  brutal  curiosity  with  a  glimpse  of 
the  forbidden  mysteries  of  the  place.  This  shabby 
savage's  name  is  not  given;  his  quality  is  also  con 
cealed.  These  two  details,  taken  in  connection 
with  the  fact  that  for  his  extraordinary  offense  the 
only  punishment  he  got  from  the  East  India  Com 
pany's  Government  was  a  solemn  official  "  repri 
mand  " — suggest  the  suspicion  that  he  was  a  Euro 
pean  of  consequence.  The  same  public  document 
which  contained  the  reprimand  gave  warning  that 
future  offenders  of  his  sort,  if  in  the  company's 
service,  would  be  dismissed ;  and  if  merchants, 
suffer  revocation  of  license  and  exile  to  England. 


56  Following  the  Equator 

The  Towers  are  not  tall,  but  are  low  in  propor 
tion  to  their  circumference,  like  a  gasometer.  If 
you  should  fill  a  gasometer  half  way  up  with  solid 
granite  masonry,  then  drive  a  wide  and  deep  well 
down  through  the  center  of  this  mass  of  masonry, 
you  would  have  the  idea  of  a  Tower  of  Silence.  On 
the  masonry  surrounding  the  well  the  bodies  lie,  in 
shallow  trenches  which  radiate  like  wheel-spokes 
from  the  well.  The  trenches  slant  toward  the  well 
and  carry  into  it  the  rainfall.  Underground  drains, 
with  charcoal  filters  in  them,  carry  off  this  water 
from  the  bottom  of  the  well. 

When  a  skeleton  has  lain  in  the  Tower  exposed  to 
the  rain  and  the  flaming  sun  a  month  it  is  perfectly 
dry  and  clean.  Then  the  same  bearers  that  brought 
it  there  come  gloved  and  take  it  up  with  tongs  and 
throw  it  into  the  well.  There  it  turns  to  dust.  It  is 
never  seen  again,  never  touched  again,  in  the  world. 
Other  peoples  separate  their  dead,  and  preserve  and 
continue  social  distinctions  in  the  grave  —  the  skele 
tons  of  kings  and  statesmen  and  generals  in  temples 
and  pantheons  proper  to  skeletons  of  their  degree, 
and  the  skeletons  of  the  commonplace  and  the  poor 
in  places  suited  to  their  meaner  estate;  but  the 
Parsees  hold  that  all  men  rank  alike  in  death  —  all 
are  humble,  all  poor,  all  destitute.  In  sign  of  their 
poverty  they  are  sent  to  their  grave  naked,  in  sign 
of  their  equality  the  bones  of  the  rich,  the  poor,  the 
illustrious,  and  the  obscure  are  flung  into  the  com 
mon  well  together.  At  a  Parsee  funeral  there  are 


Following  the  Equator  57 

no  vehicles;  all  concerned  must  walk,  both  rich  and 
poor,  howsoever  great  the  distance  to  be  traversed 
may  be.  In  the  wells  of  the  Five  Towers  of  Silence 
is  mingled  the  dust  of  all  the  Parsee  men  and  women 
and  children  who  have  died  in  Bombay  and  its 
vicinity  during  the  two  centuries  which  have  elapsed 
since  the  Mohammedan  conquerors  drove  the  Parsees 
out  of  Persia,  and  into  that  region  of  India.  The 
earliest  of  the  five  towers  was  built  by  the  Modi 
family  something  more  than  200  years  ago,  and  it  is 
now  reserved  to  the  heirs  of  that  house ;  none  but 
the  dead  of  that  blood  are  carried  thither. 

The  origin  of  at  least  one  of  the  details  of  a 
Parsee  funeral  is  not  now  known  —  the  presence  of 
the  dog.  Before  a  corpse  is  borne  from  the  house 
of  mourning  it  must  be  uncovered  and  exposed  to 
the  gaze  of  a  dog ;  a  dog  must  also  be  led  in  the 
rear  of  the  funeral.  Mr.  Nusserwanjee  Byramjee, 
Secretary  to  the  Parsee  Punchayet,  said  that  these 
formalities  had  once  had  a  meaning  and  a  reason  for 
their  institution,  but  that  they  were  survivals  whose 
origin  none  could  now  account  for.  Custom  and 
tradition  continue  them  in  force,  antiquity  hallows 
them.  It  is  thought  that  in  ancient  times  in  Persia 
the  dog  was  a  sacred  animal  and  could  guide  souls  to 
heaven ;  also  that  his  eye  had  the  power  of  purify 
ing  objects  which  had  been  contaminated  by  the 
touch  of  the  dead ;  and  that  hence  his  presence  with 
the  funeral  cortege  provides  an  ever-applicable 
remedy  in  case  of  need. 


58  Following  the  Equator 

The  Parsees  claim  that  their  method  of  disposing 
of  the  dead  is  an  effective  protection  of  the  living; 
that  it  disseminates  no  corruption,  no  impurities  of 
any  sort,  no  disease-germs;  that  no  wrap,  no  gar 
ment  which  has  touched  the  dead  is  allowed  to  touch 
the  living  afterward;  that  from  the  Towers  of 
Silence  nothing  proceeds  which  can  carry  harm  to 
the  outside  world.  These  are  just  claims,  I  think. 
As  a  sanitary  measure,  their  system  seems  to  be 
about  the  equivalent  of  cremation,  and  as  sure.  We 
are  drifting  slowly  —  but  hopefully  —  toward  crema 
tion  in  these  days.  It  could  not  be  expected  that 
this  progress  should  be  swift,  but  if  it  be  steady  and 
continuous,  even  if  slow,  that  will  suffice.  When 
cremation  becomes  the  rule  we  shall  cease  to  shudder 
at  it;  we  should  shudder  at  burial  if  we  allowed 
ourselves  to  think  what  goes  on  in  the  grave. 

The  dog  was  an  impressive  figure  to  me,  repre 
senting  as  he  did  a  mystery  whose  key  is  lost.  He 
was  humble,  and  apparently  depressed ;  and  he  let 
his  head  droop  pensively,  and  looked  as  if  he  might 
be  trying  to  call  back  to  his  mind  what  it  was  that 
he  had  used  to  symbolize  ages  ago  when  he  began 
his  function.  There  was  another  impressive  thing 
close  at  hand,  but  I  was  not  privileged  to  see  it. 
That  was  the  sacred  fire  —  a  fire  which  is  supposed 
to  have  been  burning  without  interruption  for  more 
than  two  centuries;  and  so,  living  by  the  same  heat 
that  was  imparted  to  it  so  long  ago. 

The  Parsees  are  a  remarkable  community.     There 


Following  the  Equator  59 

are  only  about  60,000  in  Bombay,  and  only  about 
half  as  many  as  that  in  the  rest  of  India;  but  they 
make  up  in  importance  what  they  lack  in  numbers. 
They  are  highly  educated,  energetic,  enterprising, 
progressive,  rich,  and  the  Jew  himself  is  not  more 
lavish  or  catholic  in  his  charities  and  benevolences. 
The  Parsees  build  and  endow  hospitals,  for  both 
men  and  animals;  and  they  and  their  womenkind 
keep  an  open  purse  for  all  great  and  good  objects. 
They  are  a  political  force,  and  a  valued  support  to 
the  government.  They  have  a  pure  and  lofty 
religion,  and  they  preserve  it  in  its  integrity  and 
order  their  lives  by  it. 

We  took  a  final  sweep  of  the  wonderful  view  of 
plain  and  city  and  ocean,  and  so  ended  our  visit  to 
the  garden  and  the  Towers  of  Silence ;  and  the  last 
thing  I  noticed  was  another  symbol  —  a  voluntary 
symbol  this  one ;  it  was  a  vulture  standing  on  the 
sawed-off  top  of  a  tall  and  slender  and  branchless 
palm  in  an  open  space  in  the  ground ;  he  was  per 
fectly  motionless,  and  looked  like  a  piece  of  sculp 
ture  on  a  pillar.  And  he  had  a  mortuary  look,  too, 
which  was  in  keeping  with  the  place. 


CHAPTER   V. 

There  is  an  old  time  toast  which  is  golden  for  its  beauty.    "  When  you 
ascend  the  hill  of  prosperity  may  you  not  meet  a  friend." 

—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  next  picture  that  drifts  across  the  field  of 
my  memory  is  one  which  is  connected  with 
religious  things.  We  were  taken  by  friends  to  see 
a  Jain  temple.  It  was  small,  and  had  many  flags  or 
streamers  flying  from  poles  standing  above  its  roof ; 
and  its  little  battlements  supported  a  great  many 
small  idols  or  images.  Up-stairs,  inside,  a  solitary 
Jain  was  praying  or  reciting  aloud  in  the  middle  of 
the  room.  Our  presence  did  not  interrupt  him,  nor 
even  incommode  him  or  modify  his  fervor.  Ten 
or  twelve  feet  in  front  of  him  was  the  idol,  a  small 
figure  in  a  sitting  posture.  It  had  the  pinkish  look 
of  a  wax  doll,  but  lacked  the  doll's  roundness  of 
limb  and  approximation  to  correctness  of  form  and 
justness  of  proportion.  Mr.  Gandhi  explained 
everything  to  us.  He  was  delegate  to  the  Chicago 
Fair  Congress  of  Religions.  It  was  lucidly  done,  in 
masterly  English,  but  in  time  it  faded  from  me,  and 
now  I  have  nothing  left  of  that  episode  but  an  im 
pression  :  a  dim  idea  of  a  religious  belief  clothed  in 

(60) 


Following  the  Equator  61 

subtle  intellectual  forms,  lofty  and  clean,  barren  of 
fleshly  grossnesses ;  and  with  this  another  dim  im 
pression  which  connects  that  intellectual  system 
somehow  with  that  crude  image,  that  inadequate 
idol  —  how,  I  do  not  know.  Properly,  they  do  not 
seem  to  belong  together.  Apparently,  the  idol 
symbolized  a  person  who  had  become  a  saint  or  a 
god  through  accessions  of  steadily  augmenting  holi 
ness  acquired  through  a  series  of  reincarnations  and 
promotions  extending  over  many  ages ;  and  was 
now  at  last  a  saint  and  qualified  to  vicariously  re 
ceive  worship  and  transmit  it  to  heaven's  chancel 
lery.  Was  that  it? 

And  thence  we  went  to  Mr.  Premchand  Roy- 
chand's  bungalow,  in  Lovelane,  Byculla,  where  an 
Indian  prince  was  to  receive  a  deputation  of  the  Jain 
community  who  desired  to  congratulate  him  upon  a 
high  honor  lately  conferred  upon  him  by  his  sover 
eign,  Victoria,  Empress  of  India.  She  had  made 
him  a  knight  of  the  order  of  the  Star  of  India.  It 
would  seem  that  even  the  grandest  Indian  prince  is 
glad  to  add  the  modest  title  "Sir"  to  his  ancient 
native  grandeurs,  and  is  willing  to  do  valuable  service 
to  win  it.  He  will  remit  taxes  liberally,  and  will 
spend  money  freely  upon  the  betterment  of  the  con 
dition  of  his  subjects,  if  there  is  a  knighthood  to  be 
gotten  by  it.  And  he  will  also  do  good  work  and  a 
deal  of  it  to  get  a  gun  added  to  the  salute  allowed 
him  by  the  British  Government.  Every  year  the 
Empress  distributes  knighthoods  and  adds  guns  for 


62  Following  the  Equator 

public  services  done  by  native  princes.  The  salute 
of  a  small  prince  is  three  or  four  guns;  princes  of 
greater  consequence  have  salutes  that  run  higher  and 
higher,  gun  by  gun,  —  oh,  clear  away  up  to  eleven  ; 
possibly  more,  but  I  did  not  hear  of  any  above 
eleven-gun  princes.  I  was  told  that  when  a  four- 
gun  prince  gets  a  gun  added,  he  is  pretty  trouble 
some  for  a  while,  till  the  novelty  wears  off,  for  he 
likes  the  music,  and  keeps  hunting  up  pretexts  to 
get  himself  saluted.  It  may  be  that  supremely 
grand  folk,  like  the  Nizam  of  Hyderabad  and  the 
Gaikwar  of  Baroda,  have  more  than  eleven  guns, 
but  I  don't  know. 

When  we  arrived  at  the  bungalow,  the  large  hall 
on  the  ground  floor  was  already  about  full,  and 
carriages  were  still  flowing  into  the  grounds.  The 
company  present  made  a  fine  show,  an  exhibition  of 
human  fireworks,  so  to  speak,  in  the  matters  of  cos 
tume  and  comminglings  of  brilliant  color.  The 
variety  of  form  noticeable  in  the  display  of  turbans 
was  remarkable.  We  were  told  that  the  explanation 
of  this  was,  that  this  Jain  delegation  was  drawn 
from  many  parts  of  India,  and  that  each  man  wore 
the  turban  that  was  in  vogue  in  his  own  region. 
This  diversity  of  turbans  made  a  beautiful  effect. 

I  could  have  wished  to  start  a  rival  exhibition 
there,  of  Christian  hats  and  clothes.  I  would  have 
cleared  one  side  of  the  room  of  its  Indian  splendors 
and  repacked  the  space  with  Christians  drawn  from 
America,  England,  and  the  Colonies,  dressed  in  the 


Following  the  Equator  63 

hats  and  habits  of  now,  and  of  twenty  and  forty  and 
fifty  years  ago.  It  would  have  been  a  hideous 
exhibition,  a  thoroughly  devilish  spectacle.  Then 
there  would  have  been  the  added  disadvantage  of 
the  white  complexion.  It  is  not  an  unbearably 
unpleasant  complexion  when  it  keeps  to  itself,  but 
when  it  comes  into  competition  with  masses  of 
brown  and  black  the  fact  is  betrayed  that  it  is  en 
durable  only  because  we  are  used  to  it.  Nearly  all 
black  and  brown  skins  are  beautiful,  but  a  beautiful 
white  skin  is  rare.  How  rare,  one  may  learn  by 
walking  down  a  street  in  Paris,  New  York,  or  Lon 
don  on  a  week-day  —  particularly  an  unfashionable 
street  — and  keeping  count  of  the  satisfactory  com 
plexions  encountered  in  the  course  of  a  mile.  Where 
dark  complexions  are  massed,  they  make  the  whites 
look  bleached  out,  unwholesome,  and  sometimes 
frankly  ghastly.  I  could  notice  this  as  a  boy,  down 
South  in  the  slavery  days  before  the  war.  The 
splendid  black  satin  skin  of  the  South  African  Zulus 
of  Durban  seemed  to  me  to  come  very  close  to 
perfection.  I  can  see  those  Zulus  yet — 'ricksha 
athletes  waiting  in  front  of  the  hotel  for  custom ; 
handsome  and  intensely  black  creatures,  moderately 
clothed  in  loose  summer  stuffs  whose  snowy  white 
ness  made  the  black  all  the  blacker  by  contrast. 
Keeping  that  group  in  my  mind,  I  can  compare 
those  complexions  with  the  white  ones  which  are 
streaming  past  this  London  window  now : 
A  lady.  Complexion,  new  parchment. 


64  Following  the  Equator 

Another  lady.     Complexion,  old  parchment. 

Another.     Pink  and  white,  very  fine. 

Man.     Grayish  skin,  with  purple  areas. 

Man.     Unwholesome  fish-belly  skin, 

Girl.     Sallow  face,  sprinkled  with  freckles. 

Old  woman.     Face  whitey-gray. 

Young  butcher.     Face  a  general  red  flush. 

Jaundiced  man  —  mustard  yellow. 

Elderly  lady.  Colorless  skin,  with  two  conspic 
uous  moles. 

Elderly  man  —  a  drinker.  Boiled-cauliflower  nose 
in  a  flabby  face  veined  with  purple  crinklings. 

Healthy  young  gentleman.  Fine  fresh  complexion. 

Sick  young  man.     His  face  a  ghastly  white. 

No  end  of  people  whose  skins  are  dull  and  char 
acterless  modifications  of  the  tint  which  we  miscall 
white.  Some  of  these  faces  are  pimply;  some  ex 
hibit  other  signs  of  diseased  blood  ;  some  show  scars 
of  a  tint  out  of  harmony  with  the  surrounding  shades 
of  color.  The  white  man's  complexion  makes  no 
concealments.  It  can't.  It  seems  to  have  been 
designed  as  a  catch-all  for  everything  that  can 
damage  it.  Ladies  have  to  paint  it,  and  powder 
it,  and  cosmetic  it,  and  diet  it  with  arsenic,  and 
enamel  it,  and  be  always  enticing  it,  and  persuading 
it,  and  pestering  it,  and  fussing  at  it,  to  make  it 
beautiful;  and  they  do  not  succeed.  But  these 
efforts  show  what  they  think  of  the  natural  com 
plexion,  as  distributed.  As  distributed  it  needs 
these  helps.  The  complexion  which  they  try  to 


Following  the  Equator  65 

counterfeit  is  one  which  nature  restricts  to  the  few 
—  to  the  very  few.  To  ninety-nine  persons  she 
gives  a  bad  complexion,  to  the  hundredth  a  good 
one.  The  hundredth  can  keep  it  —  how  long? 
Ten  years,  perhaps. 

The  advantage  is  with  the  Zulu,  I  think.  He 
starts  with  a  beautiful  complexion,  and  it  will  last 
him  through.  And  as  for  the  Indian  brown  —  firm, 
smooth,  blemishless,  pleasant  and  restful  to  the  eye, 
afraid  of  no  color,  harmonizing  with  all  colors  and 
adding  a  grace  to  them  all  —  I  think  there  is  no  sort 
of  chance  for  the  average  white  complexion  against 
that  rich  and  perfect  tint. 

To  return  to  the  bungalow.  The  most  gorgeous 
costumes  present  were  worn  by  some  children.  They 
seemed  to  blaze,  so  bright  were  the  colors,  and  so 
brilliant  the  jewels  strung  over  the  rich  materials. 
These  children  were  professional  nautch-dancers,  and 
looked  like  girls,  but  thoy  were  boys.  They  got 
up  by  ones  and  twos  and  fours,  and  danced  and 
sang  to  an  accompaniment  of  weird  music.  Their 
posturings  and  gesturings  were  elaborate  and  grace 
ful,  but  their  voices  were  stringently  raspy  and  un 
pleasant,  and  there  was  a  good  deal  of  monotony 
about  the  tune. 

By  and  by,  there  was  a  burst  of  shouts  and  cheers 
outside  and  the  prince  with  his  train  entered  in  fine 
dramatic  style.  He  was  a  stately  man,  he  was 
ideally  costumed,  and  fairly  festooned  with  ropes 
of  gems ;  some  of  the  ropes  were  of  pearls,  some 


66  Following  the  Equator 

were  of  uncut  great  emeralds —  emeralds  renowned 
in  Bombay  for  their  quality  and  value.  Their  size 
was  marvelous,  and  enticing  to  the  eye,  those  rocks. 
A  boy  —  a  princeling  —  was  with  the  prince,  and  he 
also  was  a  radiant  exhibition. 

The  ceremonies  were  not  tedious.  The  prince 
strode  to  his  throne  with  the  port  and  majesty  — 
and  the  sternness  — of  a  Julius  Caesar  coming  to  re 
ceive  and  receipt  for  a  back-country  kingdom  and 
have  it  over  and  get  out,  and  no  fooling.  There 
was  a  throne  for  the  young  prince,  too,  and  the  two 
sat  there,  side  by  side,  with  their  officers  grouped 
at  either  hand  and  most  accurately  and  creditably 
reproducing  the  pictures  which  one  sees  in  the 
books  —  pictures  which  people  in  the  prince's  line 
of  business  have  been  furnishing  ever  since  Solomon 
received  the  Queen  of  Sheba  and  showed  her  his 
things.  The  chief  of  the  Jain  delegation  read  his 
paper  of  congratulations,  then  pushed  it  into  a  beau 
tifully-engraved  silver  cylinder,  which  was  delivered 
with  ceremony  into  the  prince's  hands  and  at  once 
delivered  by  him  without  ceremony  into  the  hands 
of  an  officer.  I  will  copy  the  address  here.  It  is 
interesting,  as  showing  what  an  Indian  prince's  sub 
ject  may  have  opportunity  to  thank  him  for  in  these 
days  of  modern  English  rule,  as  contrasted  with 
what  his  ancestor  would  have  given  them  oppor 
tunity  to  thank  him  for  a  century  and  a  half  ago  — 
the  days  of  freedom  unhampered  by  English  inter 
ference.  A  century  and  a  half  ago  an  address  of 


Following  the  Equator  67 

thanks  could   have  been   put  into   small   space.     It 
would  have  thanked  the  prince : 

1.  For  not  slaughtering  too  many  of  his  people  upon  mere  caprice; 

2.  For  not  stripping  them  bare  by  sudden  and  arbitrary  tax  levies, 
and  bringing  famine  upon  them; 

3.  For  not  upon  empty  pretext  destroying  the   rich  and  seizing 
their  property; 

4.  For  not  killing,  blinding,  imprisoning,  or  banishing  the  relatives 
of  the  royal  house  to  protect  the  throne  from  possible  plots. 

5.  For   not  betraying  the  subject  secretly,   for  a  bribe,  into  the 
hands  of  bands  of  professional  Thugs,  to  be  murdered  and  robbed  in  the 
prince's  back  lot. 

Those  were  rather  common  princely  industries  in 
the  old  times,  but  they  and  some  others  of  a  harsh 
sort  ceased  long  ago  under  English  rule.  Better 
industries  have  taken  their  place,  as  this  Address 
from  the  Jain  community  will  show: 

"  Your  Highness, —  We  the  undersigned  members  of  the  Jain  com 
munity  of  Bombay  have  the  pleasure  to  approach  your  Highness  with 
the  expression  of  our  heartfelt  congratulations  on  the  recent  conference 
on  your  Highness  of  the  Knighthood  of  the  Most  Exalted  Order  of  the 
Star  of  India.  Ten  years  ago  we  had  the  pleasure  and  privilege  of  wel 
coming  your  Highness  to  this  city  under  circumstances  which  have  made 
a  memorable  epoch  in  the  history  of  your  State,  for  had  it  not  been  for 
a  generous  and  reasonable  spirit  that  your  Highness  displayed  in  the 
negotiations  between  the  Palitana  Durbar  and  the  Jain  community,  the 
conciliatory  spirit  that  animated  our  people  could  not  have  borne  fruit. 
That  was  the  first  step  in  your  Highness's  administration,  and  it  fitly 
elicited  the  praise  of  the  Jain  community,  and  of  the  Bombay  Govern 
ment.  A  decade  of  your  Highness's  administration,  combined  with  the 
abilities,  training,  and  acquirements  that  your  Highness  brought  to  bear 
upon  it,  has  justly  earned  for  your  Highness  the  unique  and  honourable 
distinction  —  the  Knighthood  of  the  Most  Exalted  Order  of  the  Star  of 
India,  which  we  understand  your  Highness  is  the  first  to  enjoy  among 
Chiefs  of  your  Highness's  rank  and  standing.  And  we  assure  your 
Highness  that  for  this  mark  of  honour  that  has  been  conferred  on  you 


68  Following  the  Equator 

by  Her  Most  Gracious  Majesty,  the  Queen-Empress,  we  feel  no  less 
proud  than  your  Highness.  Establishment  of  commercial  factories, 
schools,  hospitals,  etc.,  by  your  Highness  in  your  State  has  marked  your 
Highness's  career  during  these  ten  years,  and  we  trust  that  your  High 
ness  will  be  spared  to  rule  over  your  people  with  wisdom  and  foresight, 
and  foster  the  many  reforms  that  your  Highness  has  been  pleased  to 
introduce  in  your  State.  We  again  offer  your  Highness  our  warmest 
felicitations  for  the  honour  that  has  been  conferred  on  you.  We  beg  to 
remain  your  Highness's  obedient  servants." 

Factories,  schools,  hospitals,  reforms.  The  prince 
propagates  that  kind  of  things  in  the  modern  times, 
and  gets  knighthood  and  guns  for  it. 

After  the  address  the  prince  responded  with  snap 
and  brevity;  spoke  a  moment  with  half  a  dozen 
guests  in  English,  and  with  an  official  or  two  in  a 
native  tongue ;  then  the  garlands  were  distributed  as 
usual,  and  the  function  ended. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

Each  person  is  born  to  one  possession  which  outvalues  all  his  others  —  his 
last  breath. — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  JVew  Calendar. 

TOWARD  midnight,  that  night,  there  was  another 
function.  This  was  a  Hindoo  wedding  —  no, 
I  think  it  was  a  betrothal  ceremony.  Always  be 
fore,  we  had  driven  through  streets  that  were  multi 
tudinous  and  tumultuous  with  picturesque  native 
life,  but  now  there  was  nothing  of  that.  We  seemed 
to  move  through  a  city  of  the  dead.  There  was 
hardly  a  suggestion  of  life  in  those  still  and  vacant 
streets.  Even  the  crows  were  silent.  But  everywhere 
on  the  ground  lay  sleeping  natives  —  hundreds  and 
hundreds.  They  lay  stretched  at  full  length  and 
tightly  wrapped  in  blankets,  heads  and  all.  Their 
attitude  and  their  rigidity  counterfeited  death.  The 
plague  was  not  in  Bombay  then,  but  it  is  devastating 
the  city  now.  The  shops  are  deserted,  now,  half  of 
the  people  have  fled,  and  of  the  remainder  the 
smitten  perish  by  shoals  every  day.  No  doubt  the 
city  looks  now  in  the  daytime  as  it  looked  then  at 
night.  WThen  we  had  pierced  deep  into  the  native 
quarter  and  were  threading  its  narrow  dim  lanes,  we 

(69) 


70  Following  the  Equator 

had  to  go  carefully,  for  men  were  stretched  asleep 
all  about,  and  there  was  hardly  room  to  drive  between 
them.  And  every  now  and  then  a  swarm  of  rats 
would  scamper  across  past  the  horses'  feet  in  the 
vague  light  —  the  forbears  of  the  rats  that  are  carry 
ing  the  plague  from  house  to  house  in  Bombay  now. 
The  shops  were  but  sheds,  little  booths  open  to  the 
street;  and  the  goods  had  been  removed,  and  on 
the  counters  families  were  sleeping,  usually  with  an 
oil  lamp  present.  Recurrent  dead-watches,  it  looked 
like. 

But  at  last  we  turned  a  corner  and  saw  a  great 
glare  of  light  ahead.  It  was  the  home  of  the  bride, 
wrapped  in  a  perfect  conflagration  of  illuminations, 
—  mainly  gas-work  designs,  gotten  up  specially  for 
the  occasion.  Within  was  abundance  of  brilliancy  — 
flames,  costumes,  colors,  decorations,  mirrors  —  it 
was  another  Aladdin  show. 

The  bride  was  a  trim  and  comely  little  thing  of 
twelve  years,  dressed  as  we  would  dress  a  boy, 
though  more  expensively  than  we  should  do  it,  of 
course.  She  moved  about  very  much  at  her  ease, 
and  stopped  and  talked  with  the  guests  and  allowed 
her  wedding  jewelry  to  be  examined.  It  was  very 
fine.  Particularly  a  rope  of  great  diamonds,  a  lovely 
thing  to  look  at  and  handle.  It  had  a  great  emerald 
hanging  to  it. 

The  bridegroom  was  not  present.  He  was  having 
betrothal  festivities  of  his  own  at  his  father's  house. 
As  I  understood  it,  he  and  the  bride  were  to  enter- 


Following  the  Equator  71 

tain  company  every  night  and  nearly  all  night  for  a 
week  or  more,  then  get  married,  if  alive.  Both  of 
the  children  were  a  little  elderly,  as  brides  and 
grooms  go,  in  India  —  twelve ;  they  ought  to  have 
been  married  a  year  or  two  sooner;  still  to  a  stranger 
twelve  seems  quite  young  enough. 

A  while  after  midnight  a  couple  of  celebrated  and 
high-priced  nautch-girls  appeared  in  the  gorgeous 
place,  and  danced  and  sang.  With  them  were  men 
who  played  upon  strange  instruments  which  made 
uncanny  noises  of  a  sort  to  make  one's  flesh  creep. 
One  of  these  instruments  was  a  pipe,  and  to  its 
music  the  girls  went  through  a  performance'  which 
represented  snake-charming.  It  seemed  a  doubtful 
sort  of  music  to  charm  anything  with,  but  a  native 
gentleman  assured  me  that  snakes  like  it  and  will 
come  out  of  their  holes  and  listen  to  it  with  every 
evidence  of  refreshment  and  gratitude.  He  said 
that  at  an  entertainment  in  his  grounds  once,  the 
pipe  brought  out  half  a  dozen  snakes,  and  the  music 
had  to  be  stopped  before  they  would  be  persuaded 
to  go.  Nobody  wanted  their  company,  for  they 
were  bold,  familiar,  and  dangerous;  but  no  one 
would  kill  them,  of  course,  for  it  is  sinful  for  a 
Hindoo  to  kill  any  kind  of  a  creature. 

We  withdrew  from  the  festivities  at  two  in  the 
morning.  Another  picture,  then  —  but  it  has  lodged 
itself  in  my  memory  rather  as  a  stage-scene  than  as 
a  reality.  It  is  of  a  porch  and  short  flight  of  steps 
crowded  with  dark  faces  and  ghostly-white  draperies 


72  Following  the  Equator 

flooded  with  the  strong  glare  from  the  dazzling  con 
centration  of  illuminations ;  and  midway  of  the  steps 
one  conspicuous  figure  for  accent  —  a  turbaned 
giant,  with  a  name  according  to  his  size:  Rao 
Bahadur  Baskirao  Balinkanje  Pitale,  Vakeel  to  his 
Highness  the  Gaikwar  of  Baroda.  Without  him  the 
picture  would  not  have  been  complete ;  and  if  his 
name  had  been  merely  Smith,  he  wouldn't  have 
answered.  Close  at  hand  on  house-fronts  on  both 
sides  of  the  narrow  street  were  illuminations  of  a 
kind  commonly  employed  by  the  natives  —  scores  of 
glass  tumblers  (containing  tapers)  fastened  a  few 
inches  apart  all  over  great  latticed  frames,  forming 
starry  constellations  which  showed  out  vividly 
against  their  black  backgrounds.  As  we  drew  away 
into  the  distance  down  the  dim  lanes  the  illumina 
tions  gathered  together  into  a  single  mass,  and 
glowed  out  of  the  enveloping  darkness  like  a  sun. 

Then  again  the  deep  silence,  the  skurrying  rats, 
the  dim  forms  stretched  everywhere  on  the  ground ; 
'nd  on  either  hand  those  open  booths  counterfeiting 
sepulchres,  with  counterfeit  corpses  sleeping  motion 
less  in  the  flicker  of  the  counterfeit  death  lamps. 
And  now,  a  year  later,  when  I  read  the  cablegrams 
I  seem  to  be  reading  of  what  I  myself  partly  saw  — 
saw  before  it  happened  —  in  a  prophetic  dream,  a^ 
it  were.  One  cablegram  says,  "Business  in  the 
native  town  is  about  suspended.  Except  the  wailing 
and  the  tramp  of  the  funerals.  There  is  but  little 
life  or  movement.  The  closed  shops  exceed  in 


Fol1owing  the  Equator  73 

number  those  that  remain  open."  Another  says 
that  3 2 5, ooo  of  the  people  have  fled  the  city  and 
are  carrying  the  plague  to  the  country.  Three 
days  later  comes  the  news,  "The  population  is  re 
duced  by  half."  The  refugees  have  carried  the 
disease  to  Karachi;  "220  cases,  214  deaths."  A 
day  or  two  later,  "52  fresh  cases,  all  of  which 
proved  fatal." 

The  plague  carries  with  it  a  terror  which  no  other 
disease  can  excite :   for  of  all  diseases  known  to  men 
it  is  the   deadliest  —  by  far  the  deadliest.      "Fifty- 
two  fresh  cases  —  all  fatal."      It  is  the  Black  Death 
alone  that  slays  like  that.     We  can  all  imagine,  after 
a  fashion,  the   desolation   of  a   plague-stricken  city, 
and   the   stupor   of  stillness  broken   at  intervals   by 
distant    bursts   of   wailing,    marking  the   passing  of 
funerals,  here  and  there  and  yonder;   but  I  suppose 
it  is  not  possible  for  us  to  realize  to  ourselves  the 
nightmare  of  dread  and  fear  that  possesses  the  living 
who   are   present  in   such   a   place   and    cannot  get 
away.     That  half   million    fled   from  Bombay  in   a 
wild   panic   suggests   to   us   something  of  what  they 
were  feeling,  but  perhaps  not  even  they  could  realize 
\vhat  the  half   million  were   feeling  whom   they  left 
stranded  behind  to  face  the  stalking  horror  without 
chance    of   escape,     Kinglake    was    in    Cairo  many 
years  ago  during  an   epidemic  of   the  Black  Death, 
and   he   has   imagined  the   terrors   that  creep  into  a 
man's  heart  at  such  a  time  and  follow  him  until  they 
themselves  breed   the  fatal   sign   in  the  armpit,  and 


-n 


d 

74     t-  Following  the  Equator 


then  the  delirium  with  confused  images,  and  home- 
dreams,  and  reeling  billiard-tables,  and  then  the 
sudden  blank  of  death : 

"  To  the  contagionist,  filled  as  he  is  with  the  dread  of  final  causes, 
having  no  faith  in  destiny,  nor  in  the  fixed  will  of  God,  and  with  none  of 
the  devil-may-care  indifference  which  might  stand  him  instead  of  creeds 
—  to  such  one,  every  rag  that  shivers  in  the  breeze  of  a  plague-stricken 
city  has  this  sort  of  sublimity.  If  by  any  terrible  ordinance  he  be 
forced  to  venture  forth,  he  sees  death  dangling  from  every  sleeve;  and, 
as  he  creeps  forward,  he  poises  his  shuddering  limbs  between  the  im 
minent  jacket  that  is  stabbing  at  his  right  elbow  and  the  murderous 
pelisse  that  threatens  to  mow  him  clean  down  as  it  sweeps  along  on  his 
left.  But  most  of  all  he  dreads  that  which  most  of  all  he  should  love  — 
the  touch  of  a  woman's  dress;  for  mother  and  wives,  hurrying  forth  on 
kindly  errands  from  the  bedsides  of  the  dying,  go  slouching  along 
through  the  streets  more  willfully  and  less  courteously  than  the  men. 
For  a  while  it  may  be  that  the  caution  of  the  poor  Levantine  may  enable 
him  to  avoid  contact,  but  sooner  or  later,  perhaps,  the  dreaded  chance 
arrives;  that  bundle  of  linen,  with  the  dark  tearful  eyes  at  the  top  of  it, 
that  labors  along  with  the  voluptuous  clumsiness  of  Grisi —  she  has 
touched  the  poor  Levantine  with  the  hem  of  her  sleeve !  From  that 
dread  moment  his  peace  is  gone;  his  mind  for  ever  hanging  upon  the 
fatal  touch  invites  the  blow  which  he  fears;  he  watches  for  the  symp 
toms  of  plague  so  carefully,  that  sooner  or  later  they  come  in  truth. 
The  parched  mouth  is  a  sign  —  his  mouth  is  parched;  the  throbbing 
brain  —  his  brain  does  throb;  the  rapid  pulse  —  he  touches  his  own 
wrist  (for  he  dares  not  ask  counsel  of  any  man,  lest  he  be  deserted),  he 
touches  his  wrist,  and  feels  how  his  frighted  blood  goes  galloping  out  of 
his  heart.  There  is  nothing  but  the  fatal  swelling  that  is  wanting  to 
make  his  sad  conviction  complete;  immediately,  he  has  an  odd  feel  under 
the  arm  —  no  pain,  but  a  little  straining  of  the  skin;  he  would  to  God  it 
were  his  fancy  that  were  strong  enough  to  give  him  that  sensation;  this 
is  the  worst  of  all.  It  now  seems  to  him  that  he  could  be  happy  and 
contented  with  his  parched  mouth,  and  his  throbbing  brain,  and  his 
rapid  pulse,  if  only  he  could  know  that  there  were  no  swelling  under 
the  left  arm;  but  dares  he  try?  —  in  a  moment  of  calmness  and  delibera 
tion  he  dares  not;  but  when  for  a  while  he  has  writhed  under  the  torture 
ot  suspense,  a  sudden  strength  of  will  drives  him  to  seek  and  know  his 


Following  the  Equator  75 

fate;  he  touches  the  gland,  and  finds  the  skin  sane  and  sound,  but 
under  the  cuticle  there  lies  a  small  lump  like  a  pistol-bullet,  that  moves 
as  he  pushes  it.  Oh  !  but  is  this  for  all  certainty,  is  this  the  sentence  of 
death?  Feel  the  gland  of  the  other  arm.  There  is  not  the  same  lump 
exactly,  yet  something  a  little  like  it.  Have  not  some  people  glands 
naturally  enlarged  ?  —  would  to  heaven  he  were  one !  So  he  does  for 
himself  the  work  of  the  plague,  and  when  the  Angel  of  Death  thus 
courted  does  in  deed  and  in  truth  come,  he  has  only  to  finish  that  which 
has  been  so  well  begun;  he  passes  his  fiery  hand  over  the  brain  of 
the  victim,  and  lets  him  rave  for  a  season,  but  all  chance- wise,  of 
people  and  things  once  dear,  or  of  people  and  things  indifferent. 
Once  more  the  poor  fellow  is  back  at  his  home  in  fair  Provence,  and 
sees  the  sun-dial  that  stood  in  his  childhood's  garden  —  sees  his  mother, 
and  the  long-since-forgotten  face  of  that  little  dear  sister  —  (he  sees  her, 
he  says,  on  a  Sunday  morning,  for  all  the  church  bells  are  ringing);  he 
looks  up  and  down  through  the  universe,  and  owns  it  well  piled  with 
bales  upon  bales  of  cotton,  and  cotton  eternal  —  so  much  so  —  that  he 
feels  —  he  knows  —  he  swears  he  could  make  that  winning  hazard,  if 
the  billiard-table  would  not  slant  upwards,  and  if  the  cue  were  a  cue 
worth  playing  with;  'but  it  is  not  —  it's  a  cue  that  won't  move  —  his  own 
arm  won't  move  —  in  short,  there's  the  devil  to  pay  in  the  brain  of  the 
poor  Levantine;  and  perhaps,  the  next  night  but  one  he  becomes  the 
*  life  and  the  soul '  of  some  squalling  jackal  family,  who  fish  him  out 
by  the  foot  from  his  shallow  and  sandy  grave." 


CHAPTER   VII. 

Hunget  is  the  handmaid  of  genius. —  PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar, 

ONE  day  during  our  stay  in  Bombay  there  was  a 
criminal  trial  of  a  most  interesting  sort,  a 
terribly  realistic  chapter  out  of  the  "Arabian 
Nights,"  a  strange  mixture  of  simplicities  and 
pieties  and  murderous  practicalities,  which  brought 
back  the  forgotten  days  of  Thuggee  and  made  them 
live  again;  in  fact,  even  made  them  believable.  It 
was  a  case  where  a  young  girl  had  been  assassinated 
for  the  sake  of  her  trifling  ornaments,  things  not 
worth  a  laborer's  day's  wages  in  America.  This 
thing  could  have  been  done  in  many  other  countries, 
but  hardly  with  the  cold  business-like  depravity, 
absence  of  fear,  absence  of  caution,  destitution  of 
the  sense  of  horror,  repentance,  remorse,  exhibited 
in  this  case.  Elsewhere  the  murderer  would  have 
done  his  crime  secretly,  by  night,  and  without  wit 
nesses  ;  his  fears  would  have  allowed  him  no  peace 
while  the  dead  body  was  in  his  neighborhood ;  he 
would  not  have  rested  until  he  had  gotten  it  safe 
out  of  the  way  and  hidden  as  effectually  as  he  could 
hide  it.  But  this  Indian  murderer  does  his  deed  in 

(76) 


Following  the  Equator  77 

the  full  light  of  day,  cares  nothing  for  the  society  of 
witnesses,  is  in  no  way  incommoded  by  the  presence 
of  the  corpse,  takes  his  own  time  about  disposing 
of  it,  and  the  whole  party  are  so  indifferent,  so 
phlegmatic,  that  they  take  their  regular  sleep  as  if 
nothing  was  happening  and  no  halters  hanging  over 
them ;  and  these  five  bland  people  close  the  episode 
with  a  religious  service.  The  thing  reads  like  a 
Meadows-Taylor  Thug-tale  of  half  a  century  ago,  as 
may  be  seen  by  the  official  report  of  the  trial : 

"At  the  Mazagon  Police  Court  yesterday,  Superintendent  Nolan  again 
charged  Tookaram  Suntoo  Savat  Baya,  woman,  her  daughter  Krishni, 
and  Gopal  Vithoo  Bhanayker,  before  Mr.  Phiroze  Hoshang  Dastur, 
Fourth  Presidency  Magistrate,  under  sections  302  and  109  of  the  Code, 
with  having  on  the  night  cf  the  3Oth  of  December  last  murdered  a  Hin 
doo  girl  named  Cassi,  aged  twelve,  by  strangulation,  in  the  room  of  a 
chawl  at  Jakaria  Bunder,  on  the  Sewri  road,  and  also  with  aiding  and 
abetting  each  other  in  the  commission  of  the  offense. 

"  Mr.  F.  A.  Little,  Public  Prosecutor,  conducted  the  case  on  behalf 
of  the  Crown,  the  accused  being  undefended. 

"  Mr.  Little  applied  under  the  provisions  of  the  Criminal  Procedure 
Code  to  tender  pardon  to  one  of  the  accused,  Krishni,  woman,  aged 
22,  on  her  undertaking  to  make  a  true  and  full  statement  of  facts  under 
which  the  deceased  girl  Cassi  was  murdered. 

"The  Magistrate  having  granted  the  Public  Prosecutor's  application, 
the  accused  Krishni  went  into  the  witness-box,  and,  on  being  examined 
by  Mr.  Little,  made  the  following  confession: —  I  am  a  mill-hand  em 
ployed  at  the  Jubilee  Mill.  I  recollect  the  day  (Tuesday)  on  which  the 
body  of  the  deceased  Cassi  was  found.  Previous  to  that  I  attended 
the  mill  for  half  a  day,  and  then  returned  home  at  3  in  the  afternoon, 
when  I  saw  five  persons  in  the  house,  viz. :  the  first  accused  Tookaram, 
who  is  my  paramour,  my  mother,  the  second  accused  Baya,  the  accused 
Gopal,  and  two  guests  named  Ramji  Daji  and  Annaji  Gungaram.  Took 
aram  rented  the  room  of  the  chawl  situated  at  Jakaria  Bunder  road  from 
its  owner,  Girdharilal  Radhakishan,  and  in  that  room  I,  my  paramour, 
Tookaram,  and  his  younger  brother,  Yesso  Mahadhoo,  live.  Since  his 


78  Following  the  Equator 

arrival  in  Bombay  from  his  native  country  Yesso  came  and  lived  with  us. 
When  1  returned  from  the  mill  on  the  afternoon  of  that  day,  I  saw  the 
two  guests  seated  on  a  cot  in  the  veranda,  and  a  few  minutes  after  the 
accused  Gopal  came  and  took  his  seat  by  their  side,  while  I  and  my 
mother  were  seated  inside  the  room.  Tookaram,  who  had  gone  out  to 
fetch  some  pan  and  betelnuts,  on  his  return  home  had  brought  the  two 
guests  with  him.  After  returning  home  he  gave  them  pan  supari. 
While  they  were  eating  it  my  mother  came  out  of  the  room  and  inquired 
of  one  of  the  guests,  Ramji,  what  had  happened  to  his  foot,  when  he 
replied  that  he  had  tried  many  remedies,  but  they  had  done  him  no 
good.  My  mother  then  took  some  rice  in  her  hand  and  prophesied  that 
the  disease  which  Ramji  was  suffering  from  would  not  be  cured  until  he 
returned  to  his  native  country.  In  the  meantime  the  deceased  Cassi 
came  from  the  direction  of  an  outhouse,  and  stood  in  front  on  the 
threshold  of  our  room  with  a  lota  in  her  hand.  Tookaram  then  told  his 
two  guests  to  leave  the  room,  and  they  then  went  up  the  steps  towards 
the  quarry.  After  the  guests  had  gone  away,  Tookaram  seized  the 
deceased,  who  had  come  into  the  room,  and  he  afterwards  put  a  waist 
band  around  her,  and  tied  her  to  a  post  which  supports  a  loft.  After 
doing  this,  he  pressed  the  girl's  throat,  and,  having  tied  her  mouth  with 
the  dhotur  (now  shown  in  court),  fastened  it  to  the  post.  Having  killed 
the  girl,  Tookaram  removed  her  gold  head  ornament  and  a  gold  putlee, 
and  also  took  charge  of  her  lota.  Besides  these  two  ornaments  Cassi  had 
on  her  person  ear-studs,  a  nose-ring,  some  silver  toe-rings,  two  neck 
laces,  a  pair  of  silver  anklets  and  bracelets.  Tookaram  afterwards  tried 
to  remove  the  silver  amulets,  the  ear-studs,  and  the  nose-ring;  but  he 
failed  in  his  attempt.  While  he  was  doing  so,  I,  my  mother,  and  Gopal 
were  present.  After  removing  the  two  gold  ornaments,  he  handed  them 
over  to  Gopal,  who  was  at  the  time  standing  near  me.  When  he  killed 
Cassi,  Tookaram  threatened  to  strangle  me  also  if  I  informed  any  one 
of  this.  Gopal  and  myself  were  then  standing  at  the  door  of  our  room, 
and  we  both  were  threatened  by  Tookaram.  My  mother,  Baya,  had 
seized  the  legs  of  the  deceased  at  the  time  she  was  killed,  and  whilst 
she  was  being  tied  to  the  post.  Cassi  then  made  a  noise.  Tookaram 
and  my  mother  took  part  in  killing  the  girl.  After  the  murder  her  body 
was  wrapped  up  in  a  mattress  and  kept  on  the  loft  over  the  door  of  our 
room.  When  Cassi  was  strangled,  the  door  of  the  room  was  fastened 
from  the  inside  by  Tookaram.  This  deed  was  committed  shortly  after 
my  return  home  from  work  in  the  mill.  Tookaram  put  the  body  of  the 


Following  the  Equator  79 

deceased  in  the  mattress,  and,  after  it  was  left  on  the  loft,  he  went  to 
have  his  head  shaved  by  a  barber  named  Sambhoo  Ragho,  who  lives 
only  one  door  away  from  me.  My  mother  and  myself  then  remained  in 
the  possession  of  the  information.  I  was  slapped  and  threatened  by 
my  paramour,  Tookaram,  and  that  was  the  only  reason  why  I  did  not 
inform  any  one  at  that  time.  When  I  told  Tookaram  that  I  would  give 
information  of  the  occurrence,  he  slapped  me.  The  accused  Gopal  was 
asked  by  Tookaram  to  go  back  to  his  room,  and  he  did  so,  taking  away 
with  him  the  two  gold  ornaments  and  the  lota.  Yesso  Mahadhoo,  a 
brother-in-law  of  Tookaram,  came  to  the  house  and  asked  Tookaram 
why  he  was  washing,  the  water-pipe  being  just  opposite.  Tookaram 
replied  that  he  was  washing  his  dhotur,  as  a  fowl  had  polluted  it. 
About  six  o'clock  of  the  evening  of  that  day  my  mother  gave  me  three 
pice  and  asked  me  to  buy  a  cocoanut,  and  I  gave  the  money  to  Yesso, 
who  went  and  fetched  a  cocoanut  and  some  betel  leaves.  When  Yesso 
and  others  were  in  the  room  I  was  bathing,  and,  after  I  finished  my 
bath,  my  mother  took  the  cocoanut  and  the  betel  leaves  from  Yesso,  and 
we  five  went  to  the  sea.  The  party^  consisted  of  Tookaram,  my  mother, 
Yesso,  Tookaram's  younger  brother,  and  myself.  On  reaching  the  sea 
shore,  my  mother  made  the  offering  to  the  sea,  and  prayed  to  be  par 
doned  for  what  we  had  done.  Before  we  went  to  the  sea,  some  one  came 
to  inquire  after  the  girl  Cassi.  The  police  and  other  people  came  to 
make  these  inquiries  both  before  and  after  we  left  the  house  for  the  sea 
shore.  The  police  questioned  my  mother  about  the  girl,  and  she  replied 
that  Cassi  had  come  to  her  door,  but  had  left.  The  next  day  the  police 
questioned  Tookaram,  and  he,  too,  gave  a  similar  reply.  This  was  said 
the  same  night  when  the  search  was  made  for  the  girl.  After  the  offer 
ing  was  made  to  the  sea,  we  partook  of  the  cocoanut  and  returned 
home,  when  my  mother  gave  me  some  food;  but  Tookaram  did  not  par 
take  of  any  food  that  night.  After  dinner  I  and  my  mother  slept  inside 
the  room,  and  Tookaram  slept  on  a  cot  near  his  brother-in-law,  Yesso 
Mahadhoo,  just  outside  the  door.  That  was  not  the  usual  place  where 
Tockaram  slept.  He  usually  slept  inside  the  room.  The  body  of  the 
deceased  remained  on  the  loft  when  I  went  to  sleep.  The  room  in  which 
we  slept  was  locked,  and  I  heard  that  my  paramour,  Tookaram,  was 
restless  outside.  About  3  o'clock  the  following  morning  Tookaram 
knocked  at  the  door,  when  both  myself  and  my  mother  opened  it.  He 
then  told  me  to  go  to  the  steps  leading  to  the  quarry,  and  see  if  any  one 
was  about.  Those  steps  lead  to  a  stable,  through  which  we  go  to  the 


80  Following  the  Equator 

quarry  at  the  back  of  the  compound.  When  I  got  to  the  steps  I  saw  no 
one  there.  Tookaram  asked  me  if  any  one  was  there,  and  I  replied  that 
I  could  see  no  one  about.  He  then  took  the  body  of  the  deceased  from 
the  loft,  and,  having  wrapped  it  up  in  his  saree,  asked  me  to  accompany 
him  to  the  steps  of  the  quarry,  and  I  did  so.  The  saree  now  produced 
here  was  the  same.  Besides  the  saree,  there  was  also  a  choice  on  the 
body.  He  then  carried  the  body  in  his  arms,  and  went  up  the  steps, 
through  the  stable,  and  then  to  the  right  hand  towards  a  sahib's  bunga 
low,  where  Tookaram  placed  the  body  near  a  wall.  All  the  time  I 
and  my  mother  were  with  him.  When  the  body  was  taken  down, 
Yessoo  was  lying  on  the  cot.  After  depositing  the  body  under  the  wall, 
we  all  returned  home,  and  soon  after  5  A.  M.  the  police  again  came  and 
took  Tookaram  away.  About  an  hour  after  they  returned  and  took  me 
and  my  mother  away.  We  were  questioned  about  it,  when  I  made  a 
statement.  Two  hours  later  I  was  taken  to  the  room,  and  I  pointed  out 
this  waistband,  the  dhotur,  the  mattress,  and  the  wooden  post  to 
Superintendent  Nolan  and  Inspectors  Roberts  and  Rashanali,  in  the 
presence  of  my  mother  and  Tookaram.  Tookaram  killed  the  girl  Cassi 
for  her  ornaments,  which  he  wanted  for  the  girl  to  whom  he  was  shortly 
going  to  be  married.  The  body  was  found  in  the  same  place  where  it 
was  deposited  by  Tookaram." 

The  criminal  side  of  the  native  has  always  been 
picturesque,  always  readable.  The  Thuggee  and 
one  or  two  other  particularly  outrageous  features  of 
it  have  been  suppressed  by  the  English,  but  there  is 
enough  of  it  left  to  keep  it  darkly  interesting.  One 
finds  evidence  of  these  survivals  in  the  newspapers. 
Macaulay  has  a  light-throwing  passage  upon  this 
matter  in  his  great  historical  sketch  of  Warren 
Hastings,  where  he  is  describing  some  effects  which 
followed  the  temporary  paralysis  of  Hastings'  pow 
erful  government  brought  about  by  Sir  Philip  Francis 
and  his  party: 

"The  natives  considered  Hastings  as  a  fallen  man;  and  they  acted 
after  their  kind.  Some  of  our  readers  may  have  seen,  in  India,  a  cloud 


'a,  {^  ,, 

Following  the  Equator  81 

of  crows  pecking  a  sick  vulture  to  death  —  no  bad  type  of  what  happens 
in  that  country  as  often  as  fortune  deserts  one  who  has  been  great  and 
dreaded.  In  an  instant  all  the  sycophants,  who  had  lately  been  ready 
to  lie  for  him,  to  forge  for  him,  to  pander  for  him,  to  poison  for  him, 
hasten  to  purchase  the  favor  of  his  victorious  enemies  by  accusing  him. 
An  Indian  government  has  only  to  let  it  be  understood  that  ty  wishes  a 
particular  man  to  be  ruined,  and  in  twenty-four  hours  it  will  be  furnished 
with  grave  charges,  supported  by  depositions  so  full  and  circumstantial 
that  any  person  unaccustomed  to  Asiatic  mendacity  would  regard  them 
as  decisive.  It  is  well  if  the  signature  of  the  destined  victim  is  not 
counterfeited  at  the  foot  of  some  illegal  compact,  and  if  some  treasonable 
paper  is  not  slipped  into  a  hiding-place  in  his  house." 

That  was  nearly  a  century  and  a  quarter  ago. 
An  article  in  one  of  the  chief  journals  of  India  (the 
Pioneer]  shows  that  in  some  respects  the  native  of 
to-day  is  just  what  his  ancestor  was  then.  Here  are 
niceties  of  so  subtle  and  delicate  a  sort  that  they  lift 
their  breed  of  rascality  to  a  place  among  the  fine 
arts,  and  almost  entitle  it  to  respect: 

"The  records  of  the  Indian  courts  might  certainly  be  relied  upon  to 
prove  that  swindlers  as  a  class  in  the  East  come  very  close  to,  if  they  do 
not  surpass,  in  brilliancy  of  execution  and  originality  of  design  the  most 
expert  of  their  fraternity  in  Europe  and  America.  India  in  especial  is 
the  home  of  forgery.  There  are  some  particular  districts  which  are 
noted  as  marts  for  the  finest  specimens  of  the  forger's  handiwork.  The 
business  is  carried  on  by  firms  who  possess  stores  of  stamped  papers  to 
suit  every  emergency.  They  habitually  lay  in  a  store  of  fresh  stamped 
papers  every  year,  and  some  of  the  older  and  more  thriving  houses  can 
supply  documents  for  the  past  forty  years,  bearing  the  proper  water 
mark  and  possessing  the  genuine  appearance  of  age.  Other  districts 
have  earned  notoriety  for  skilled  perjury,  a  pre-eminence  that  excites  a 
respectful  admiration  when  one  thinks  of  the  universal  prevalence  of  the 
art,  and  persons  desirous  of  succeeding  in  false  suits  are  ready  to  pay 
handsomely  to  avail  themselves  of  the  services  of  these  local  experts  as 
witnesses." 


82  Following  the  Equator 

Various  instances  illustrative  of  the  methods  of 
those  swindlers  are  given.  They  exhibit  deep  cun 
ning  and  total  depravity  on  the  part  of  the  swindler 
and  his  pals,  and  more  obtuseness  on  the  part  of 
the  victim  than  one  would  expect  to  find  in  a 
country  where  suspicion  of  your  neighbor  must 
surely  be  one  of  the  earliest  things  learned.  The 
favorite  subject  is  the  young  fool  who  has  just  come 
into  a  fortune  and  is  trying  to  see  how  poor  a  use 
he  can  put  it  to.  I  will  quote  one  example: 

"  Sometimes  another  form  of  confidence  trick  is  adopted,  which  is 
invariably  successful.  The  particular  pigeon  is  spotted,  and,  his  ac 
quaintance  having  been  made,  he  is  encouraged  in  every  form  of  vice. 
When  the  friendship  is  thoroughly  established,  the  swindler  remarks  to 
the  young  man  that  he  has  a  brother  who  has  asked  him  to  lend  him 
Rs.  10,000.  The  swindler  says  he  has  the  money  and  would  lend  it; 
but,  as  the  borrower  is  his  brother,  he  cannot  charge  interest.  So  he 
proposes  that  he  should  hand  the  dupe  the  money,  and  the  latter  should 
lend  it  to  the  swindler's  brother,  exacting  a  heavy  pre-payment  of  inter 
est,  which,  it  is  pointed  out,  they  may  equally  enjoy  in  dissipation. 
The  dupe  sees  no  objection,  and  on  the  appointed  day  receives  Rs. 7,000 
from  the  swindler,  which  he  hands  over  to  the  confederate.  The  latter 
is  profuse  in  his  thanks,  and  executes  a  promissory  note  for  Rs.  10,000, 
payable  to  bearer.  The  swindler  allows  the  scheme  to  remain  quiescent 
for  a  time,  and  then  suggests  that,  as  the  money  has  not  been  repaid 
and  as  it  would  be  unpleasant  to  sue  his  brother,  it  would  be  better  to 
sell  the  note  in  the  bazaar.  The  dupe  hands  the  note  over,  for  the 
money  he  advanced  was  not  his,  and,  on  being  informed  that  it  would 
be  necessary  to  have  his  signature  on  the  back  so  as  to  render  the* 
security  negotiable,  he  signs  without  any  1  esitation.  The  swindler 
passes  it  on  to  confederates,  and  the  latter  employ  a  respectable  firm  of 
solicitors  to  ask  the  dupe  if  his  signature  is  genuine.  He  admits  it  at  once, 
and  his  fate  is  sealed.  A  suit  is  filed  by  a  confederate  against  the 
dupe,  two  accomplices  being  made  co-defendants.  They  admit  their 
signatures  as  indorsers,  and  the  one  swears  he  bought  the  note  for  value 
from  the  dupe.  The  latter  has  no  defense,  for  no  court  would  believe 


Following  the  Equator  83 

the  apparently  idle  explanation  of    the  manner  in  which  he  came  to 
endorse  the  note." 

There  is  only  one  India !  It  is  the  only  country 
that  has  a  monopoly  of  grand  and  imposing  special 
ties.  When  another  country  has  a  remarkable  thing, 
it  cannot  have  it  all  to  itself  —  some  other  country 
has  a  duplicate.  But  India  —  that  is  different.  Its 
marvels  are  its  own;  the  patents  cannot  be  in 
fringed  ;  imitations  are  not  possible.  And  think  of 
the  size  of  them,  the  majesty  of  them,  the  weird  and 
outlandish  character  of  the  most  of  them ! 

There  is  the  Plague,  the  Black  Death :  India 
invented  it;  India  is  the  cradle  of  that  mighty  birth. 

The  Car  of  Juggernaut  was  India's  invention. 

So  was  the  Suttee ;  and  within  the  time  of  men 
still  living  eight  hundred  widows  willingly,  and,  in 
fact,  rejoicingly,  burned  themselves  to  death  on  the 
bodies  of  their  dead  husbands  in  a  single  year. 
Eight  hundred  would  do  it  this  year  if  the  British 
Government  would  let  them. 

Famine  is  India's  specialty.  Elsewhere  famines 
are  inconsequential  incidents  —  in  India  they  are 
devastating  cataclysms ;  in  one  case  they  annihilate 
hundreds ;  in  the  other,  millions. 

India  has  2,000,000  gods,  and  worships  them  all. 
In  religion  all  other  countries  are  paupers;  India  is 
the  only  millionaire. 

With  her  everything  is  on  a  giant  scale  —  even 
her  poverty;  no  other  country  can  show  anything 
to  compare  with  it.  And  she  has  been  used  to 


84  Following  the  Equator 

wealth  on  so  vast  a  scale  that  she  has  to  shorten  to 
single  words  the  expressions  describing  great  sums. 
She  describes  100,000  with  one  world  —  a  lakh; 
she  describes  ten  millions  with  one  word  —  a  crore. 

In  the  bowels  of  the  granite  mountains  she  has 
patiently  carved  out  dozens  of  vast  temples,  and 
made  them  glorious  with  sculptured  colonnades  and 
stately  groups  of  statuary,  and  has  adorned  the 
eternal  walls  with  noble  paintings.  She  has  built 
fortresses  of  such  magnitude  that  the  show-strong 
holds  of  the  rest  of  the  world  are  but  modest  little 
things  by  comparison ;  palaces  that  are  wonders  for 
rarity  of  materials,  delicacy  and  beauty  of  workman 
ship,  and  for  cost;  and  one  tomb  which  men  go 
around  the  globe  to  see.  It  takes  eighty  nations, 
speaking  eighty  languages,  to  people  her,  and  they 
number  three  hundred  millions. 

On  top  of  all  this  she  is  the  mother  and  home  of 
that  wonder  of  wonders  —  caste — and  of  that  mys 
tery  of  mysteries,  the  satanic  brotherhood  of  the 
Thugs. 

India  had  the  start  of  the  whole  world  in  the  be 
ginning  of  things.  She  had  the  first  civilization ; 
she  had  the  first  accumulation  of  material  wealth ; 
she  was  populous  with  deep  thinkers  and  subtle  in 
tellects ;  she  had  mines,  and  woods,  and  a  fruitful 
soil.  It  would  seem  as  if  she  should  have  kept  the 
lead,  and  should  be  to-day  not  the  meek  dependent 
of  an  alien  master,  but  mistress  of  the  world,  and 
delivering  law  and  command  to  every  tribe  and 


vvi>s  A-  A '1  -   ,-vt.        ~; - 

Following  the  Equator  85 

nation  in  it.  But,  in  truth,  there  was  never  any 
possibility  of  such  supremacy  for  her.  If  there  had 
been  but  one  India  and  one  language  —  but  there 
were  eighty  of  them !  Where  there  are  eighty 
nations  and  several  hundred  governments,  fighting 
and  quarreling  must  be  the  common  business  of  life; 
unity  of  purpose  and  policy  are  impossible;  out  of 
such  elements  supremacy  in  the  world  cannot  come. 
Even  caste  itself  could  have  had  the  defeating  effect 
of  a  multiplicity  of  tongues,  no  doubt;  for  it  sepa 
rates  a  people  into  layers,  and  layers,  and  still  other 
layers,  that  have  no  community  of  feeling  with  each 
other;  and  in  such  a  condition  of  things  as  that, 
patriotism  can  have  no  healthy  growth. 

It  was  the  division  of  the  country  into  so  many 
states  and  nations  that  made  Thuggee  possible  and 
prosperous.  It  is  difficult  to  realize  the  situation. 
But  perhaps  one  may  approximate  it  by  imagining 
the  States  of  our  Union  peopled  by  separate  nations, 
speaking  separate  languages,  with  guards  and 
custom-houses  strung  along  all  frontiers,  plenty  of 
interruptions  for  travelers  and  traders,  interpreters 
able  to  handle  all  the  languages  very  rare  or  non 
existent,  and  a  few  wars  always  going  on  here  and 
there  and  yonder  as  a  further  embarrassment  to 
commerce  and  excursioning.  It  would  make  inter 
communication  in  a  measure  ungeneral.  India  had 
eighty  languages,  and  more  custom-houses  than 
cats.  No  clever  man  with  the  instinct  of  a  highway 
robber  could  fail  to  notice  what  a  chance  for  busi- 


86  Following  the  Equator 

ness  was  here  offered.  India  was  full  of  clever  men 
with  the  highwayman  instinct,  and  so,  quite  natur 
ally,  the  brotherhood  of  the  Thugs  came  into  being 
to  meet  the  long-felt  want. 

How  long  ago  that  was  nobody  knows  —  cen 
turies,  it  is  supposed.  One  of  the  chiefest  wonders 
connected  with  it  was  the  success  with  which  it  kept 
its  secret.  The  English  trader  did  business  in  India 
two  hundred  years  and  more  before  he  ever  heard  of 
it;  and  yet  it  was  assassinating  its  thousands  all 
around  him  every  year,  the  whole  time. 


CHAPTER   VIII. 

The  old  saw  says,  "  Let  a  sleeping  dog  lie."     Right.    Still,  when  there  is 
much  at  stake  it  is  better  to  get  a  newspaper  to  do  it. 

—Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

FROM  DIARY: 

JANUARY  28.  I  learned  of  an  official  Thug- 
book  the  other  day.  I  was  not  aware  before 
that  there  was  such  a  thing.  I  am  allowed  the 
temporary  use  of  it.  We  are  making  preparations 
for  travel.  Mainly  the  preparations  are  purchases 
of  bedding.  This  is  to  be  used  in  sleeping  berths  in 
the  trains;  in  private  houses  sometimes;  and  in 
nine-tenths  of  the  hotels.  It  is  not  realizable;  and 
yet  it  is  true.  It  is  a  survival;  an  apparently  un 
necessary  thing  which  in  some  strange  way  has  out 
lived  the  conditions  which  once  made  it  necessary. 
It  comes  down  from  a  time  when  the  railway  and 
the  hotel  did  not  exist ;  when  the  occasional  white 
traveler  went  horseback  or  by  bullock-cart,  and 
stopped  over  night  in  the  small  dak-bungalow  pro 
vided  at  easy  distances  by  the  Government  —  a 
shelter,  merely,  and  nothing  more.  He  had  to  carry 
bedding  along,  or  do  without.  The  dwellings  of  the 
English  residents  are  spacious  and  comfortable  and 

(87) 


88  Following  the  Equator 

commodiously  furnished,  and  surely  it  must  be  an 
odd  sight  to  see  half  a  dozen  guests  come  filing  into 
such  a  place  and  dumping  blankets  and  pillows  here 
and  there  and  everywhere.  But  custom  makes  in 
congruous  things  congruous. 

One  buys  the  bedding,  with  waterproof  hold-all 
for  it,  at  almost  any  shop  —  there  is  no  difficulty 
about  it. 

January  30 <  What  a  spectacle  the  railway  station 
was  at  train-time  !  It  was  a  very  large  station,  yet 
when  we  arrived  it  seemed  as  if  the  whole  world  was 
present — half  of  it  inside,  the  other  half  outside, 
and  both  halves,  bearing  mountainous  head-loads  of 
bedding  and  other  freight,  trying  simultaneously  to 
pass  each  other,  in  opposing  floods,  in  one  narrow 
door.  These  opposing  floods  were  patient,  gentle, 
long-suffering  natives,  with  whites  scattered  among 
them  at  rare  intervals;  and  wherever  a  white  man's 
native  servant  appeared,  that  native  seemed  to  have 
put  aside  his  natural  gentleness  for  the  time  and  in 
vested  himself  with  the  white  man's  privilege  of  mak 
ing  a  way  for  himself  by  promptly  shoving  all  inter 
vening  black  things  out  of  it.  In  these  exhibitions 
of  authority  Satan  was  scandalous.  He  was  proba 
bly  a  Thug  in  one  of  his  former  incarnations. 

Inside  the  great  station,  tides  upon  tides  of  rain 
bow-costumed  natives  swept  along,  this  way  and 
that,  in  massed  and  bewildering  confusion,  eager, 
anxious,  belated,  distressed;  and  washed  up  to  the 
long  trains  and  flowed  into  them  with  their  packs 


Following  the  Equator  89 

and  bundles,  and  disappeared,  followed  at  once  by 
the  next  wash,  the  next  wave.  And  here  and  there, 
in  the  midst  of  this  hurly-burly,  and  seemingly  un 
disturbed  by  it,  sat  great  groups  of  natives  on  the 
bare  stone  floor, —  young,  slender  brown  women, 
old,  gray  wrinkled  women,  little  soft  brown  babies, 
old  men,  young  men,  boys;  all  poor  people,  but  all 
the  females  among  them,  both  big  and  little,  be- 
jeweled  with  cheap  and  showy  nose-rings,  toe-rings, 
leglets,  and  armlets,  these  things  constituting  all  their 
wealth,  no  doubt.  These  silent  crowds  sat  there 
with  their  humble  bundles  and  baskets  and  small 
household  gear  about  them,  and  patiently  waited  — 
for  what?  A  train  that  was  to  start  at  some  time 
or  other  during  the  day  or  night !  They  hadn't 
timed  themselves  well,  but  that  was  no  matter  —  the 
thing  had  been  so  ordered  from  on  high,  therefore 
why  worry?  There  was  plenty  of  time,  hours  and 
hours  of  it,  and  the  thing  that  was  to  happen  would 
happen  —  there  was  no  hurrying  it. 

The  natives  traveled  third  class,  and  at  marvelously 
cheap  rates.  They  were  packed  and  crammed  into 
the  cars  that  held  each  about  fifty ;  and  it  was  said 
that  often  a  Brahmin  of  the  highest  caste  was  thus 
brought  into  personal  touch,  and  consequent  de 
filement,  with  persons  of  the  lowest  castes  —  no 
doubt  a  very  shocking  thing  if  a  body  could  under 
stand  it  and  properly  appreciate  it.  .  Yes,  a  Brahmin 
who  didn't  own  a  rupee  and  couldn't  borrow  one 
might  have  to  touch  elbows  with  a  rich  hereditary 


90  Following  the  Equator 

lord  of  inferior  caste,  inheritor  of  an  ancient  title  a 
couple  of  yards  long,  and  he  would  just  have  to  stand 
it ;  for  if  either  of  the  two  was  allowed  to  go  in  the 
cars  where  the  sacred  white  people  were,  it  probably 
wouldn't  be  the  august  poor  Brahmin.  There  was 
an  immense  string  of  those  third-class  cars,  for  the 
natives  travel  by  hordes ;  and  a  weary  hard  night  of 
it  the  occupants  would  have,  no  doubt. 

When  we  reached  our  car,  Satan  and  Barney  had 
already  arrived  there  with  their  train  of  porters  carry 
ing  bedding  and  parasols  and  cigar  boxes,  and  were 
at  work.  We  named  him  Barney  for  short;  for  we 
couldn't  use  his  real  name,  there  wasn't  time. 

It  was  a  car  that  promised  comfort;  indeed,  luxury. 
Yet  the  cost  of  it  —  well,  economy  could  no  further 
go;  even  in  France;  not  even  in  Italy.  It  was  built 
of  the  plainest  and  cheapest  partially-smoothed 
boards,  with  a  coating  of  dull  paint  on  them,  and 
there  was  nowhere  a  thought  of  decoration.  The 
floor  was  bare,  but  would  not  long  remain  so  when 
the  dust  should  begin  to  fly.  Across  one  end  of  the 
compartment  ran  a  netting  for  the  accommodation 
of  hand-baggage;  at  the  other  end  was  a  door 
which  would  shut,  upon  compulsion,  but  wouldn't 
stay  shut;  it  opened  into  a  narrow  little  closet  which 
had  a  washbowl  in  one  end  of  it,  and  a  place  to  put 
a  towel,  in  case  you  had  one  with  you  —  and  you 
would  be  sure  to  have  towels,  because  you  buy  them 
with  the  bedding,  knowing  that  the  railway  doesn't 
furnish  them.  On  each  side  of  the  car,  and  running 


Following  the  Equator  91 

fore  and  aft,  was  a  broad  leather-covered  sofa  —  to 
sit  on  in  the  day  and  sleep  on  at  night.  Over  each 
sofa  hung,  by  straps,  a  wide,  flat,  leather-covered 
shelf  —  to  sleep  on.  In  the  daytime  you  can  hitch 
it  up  against  the  wall,  out  of  the  way  —  and  then 
you  have  a  big  unencumbered  and  most  comfortable 
room  to  spread  out  in.  No  car  in  any  country  is 
quite  its  equal  for  comfort  (and  privacy)!  think. 
For  usually  there  are  but  two  persons  in  it;  and 
even  when  there  are  four  there  is  but  little  sense 
of  impaired  privacy.  Our  own  cars  at  home  can 
surpass  the  railway  world  in  all  details  but  that  one : 
they  have  no  cosiness ;  there  are  too  many  people 
together. 

At  the  foot  of  each  sofa  was  a  side-door,  for 
entrance  and  exit. 

Along  the  whole  length  of  the  sofa  on  each  side 
of  the  car  ran  a  row  of  large  single-plate  windows, 
of  a  blue  tint  —  blue  to  soften  the  bitter  glare  of  the 
sun  and  protect  one's  eyes  from  torture.  These 
could  be  let  down  out  of  the  way  when  one  wanted 
the  breeze.  In  the  roof  were  two  oil  lamps  which 
gave  a  light  strong  enough  to  read  by;  each  had  a 
green-cloth  attachment  by  which  it  could  be  covered 
when  the  light  should  be  no  longer  needed. 

While  we  talked  outside  with  friends,  Barney  and 
Satan  placed  the  hand-baggage,  books,  fruits,  and 
soda-bottles  in  the  racks,  and  the  hold-alls  and  heavy 
baggage  in  the  closet,  hung  the  overcoats  and  sun- 
helmets  and  towels  on  the  hooks,  hoisted  the  two 


92  Following  the  Equator 

bed-shelves  up  out  of  the  way,  then  shouldered  then 
bedding  and  retired  to  the  third  class. 

Now  then,  you  see  what  a  handsome,  spacious, 
light,  airy,  homelike  place  it  was,  wherein  to  walk 
up  and  down,  or  sit  and  write,  or  stretch  out  and 
read  and  smoke.  A  central  door  in  the  forward  end 
of  the  compartment  opened  into  a  similar  compart 
ment.  It  was  occupied  by  my  wife  and  daughter. 
About  nine  in  the  evening,  while  we  halted  a  while 
at  a  station,  Barney  and  Satan  came  and  undid  the 
clumsy  big  hold-alls,  and  spread  the  bedding  on  the 
sofas  in  both  compartments  —  mattresses,  sheets,  gay 
coverlets,  pillows,  all  complete;  there  are  no 
chambermaids  in  India  —  apparently  it  was  an  office 
that  was  never  heard  of.  Then  they  closed  the  com 
municating  door,  nimbly  tidied  up  our  place,  put  the 
night-clothing  on  the  beds  and  the  slippers  under 
them,  then  returned  to  their  own  quarters. 

January  ji.  It  was  novel  and  pleasant,  and  I 
stayed  awake  as  long  as  I  could,  to  enjoy  it,  and  to 
read  about  those  strange  people  the  Thugs.  In  my 
sleep  they  remained  with  me,  and  tried  to  strangle 
me.  The  leader  of  the  gang  was  that  giant  Hindoo 
who  was  such  a  picture  in  the  strong  light  when  we 
were  leaving  those  Hindoo  betrothal  festivities  at  two 
o'clock  in  the  morning — Rao  Bahadur  Baskirao 
Balinkanje  Pitale,  Vakeel  to  the  Gaikwar  of  Baroda. 
It  was  he  that  brought  me  the  invitation  from  his 
master  to  go  to  Baroda  and  lecture  to  that  prince  — 
and  now  he  was  misbehaving  in  my  dreams.  But  all 


Following  the  Equator  93 

things  can  happen  in  dreams.  It  is,  indeed,  as  the 
Sweet  Singer  of  Michigan  says — irrelevantly,  of 
course,  for  the  one  and  unfailing  great  quality  which 
distinguishes  her  poetry  from  Shakespeare's  and 
makes  it  precious  to  us  is  its  stern  and  simple 
irrelevancy: 

My  heart  was  gay  and  happy, 

This  was  ever  in  my  mind, 
There  is  better  times  a  coming, 

And  I  hope  some  day  to  find 
Myself  capable  of  composing, 

It  was  my  heart's  delight 
To  compose  on  a  sentimental  subject 

If  it  came  in  my  mind  just  right.* 

Baroda.  Arrived  at  7  this  morning.  The  dawn 
was  just  beginning  to  show.  It  was  forlorn  to  have 
to  turn  out  in  a  strange  place  at  such  a  time,  and  the 
blinking  lights  in  the  station  made  it  seem  night  still. 
But  the  gentlemen  who  had  come  to  receive  us  were 
there  with  their  servants,  and  they  made  quick  work; 
there  was  no  lost  time.  We  were  soon  outside  and 
moving  swiftly  through  the  soft  gray  light,  and 
presently  were  comfortably  housed  —  with  more 
servants  to  help  than  we  were  used  to,  and  with 
rather  embarrassingly  important  officials  to  direct 
them.  But  it  was  custom;  they  spoke  Ballarat 
English,  their  bearing  was  charming  and  hospitable, 
and  so  all  went  well. 

Breakfast  was  a  satisfaction.  Across  the  lawns  was 
visible  in  the  distance  through  the  open  window  an 

»  "  The  Sentimental  Song  Book,"  p.  49  ;  theme,  "  The  Author's 
Early  Life,"  JQth  stanza. 


V,  , .t,   —f  A 


94  Following  the  Equator 

Indian  well,  with  two  oxen  tramping  leisurely  up  and 
down  long  inclines,  drawing  water;  and  out  of  the 
stillness  came  the  suffering  screech  of  the  machinery 

—  not  quite  musical,  and  yet  soothingly  melancholy 
and  dreamy  and  reposeful  —  a  wail   of   lost   spirits, 
one    might    imagine.       And    commemorative     and 
reminiscent,  perhaps;   for  of  course  the  Thugs  used 
to  throw  people   down   that    well    when  they    were 
done  with  them. 

After  breakfast  the  day  began,  a  sufficiently  busy 
one.  We  were  driven  by  winding  roads  through  a 
vast  park,  with  noble  forests  of  great  trees,  and  with 
tangles  and  jungles  of  lovely  growths  of  a  humbler 
sort;  and  at  one  place  three  large  gray  apes  came 
out  and  pranced  across  the  road  —  a  good  deal  of  a 
surprise  and  an  unpleasant  one,  for  such  creatures 
belong  in  the  menagerie,  and  they  look  artificial  and 
out  of  place  in  a  wilderness. 

We  came  to  the  city,  by  and  by,  and  drove  all 
through  it.  Intensely  Indian,  it  was,  and  crumbly, 
and  mouldering,  and  immemorially  old,  to  all  ap 
pearance.  And  the  houses  —  oh,  indescribably 
quaint  and  curious  they  were,  with  their  fronts  an 
elaborate  lace-work  of  intricate  and  beautiful  wood 
carving,  and  now  and  then  further  adorned  with  rude 
pictures  of  elephants  and  princes  and  gods  done  in 
shouting  colors ;  and  all  the  ground  floors  along 
these  cramped  and  narrow  lanes  occupied  as  shops 

—  shops  unbelievably  small  and  impossibly  packed 
with    merchantable    rubbish,    and    with   nine-tenths- 


Following  the  Equator  95 

naked  natives  squatting  at  their  work  of  hammering, 
pounding,  brazing,  soldering,  sewing,  designing, 
cooking,  measuring  out  grain,  grinding  it,  repairing 
idols  —  and  then  the  swarm  of  ragged  and  noisy 
humanity  under  the  horses'  feet  and  everywhere, 
and  the  pervading  reek  and  fume  and  smell !  It 
was  all  wonderful  and  delightful. 

Imagine  a  file  of  elephants  marching  through  such 
a  crevice  of  a  street  and  scraping  the  paint  off  both 
sides  of  it  with  their  hides.  How  big  they  must 
look,  and  how  little  they  must  make  the  houses 
look ;  and  when  the  elephants  are  in  their  glittering 
court  costume,  what  a  contrast  they  must  make  with 
the  humble  and  sordid  surroundings.  And  when  a 
mad  elephant  goes  raging  through,  belting  right  and 
left  with  his  trunk,  how  do  these  swarms  of  people 
get  out  of  the  way?  I  suppose  it  is  a  thing  which 
happens  now  and  then  in  the  mad  season  (for 
elephants  have  a  mad  season). 

I  wonder  how  old  the  town  is.  There  are  patches 
of  building — massive  structures,  monuments,  ap 
parently —  that  are  so  battered  and  worn,  and  seem 
ingly  so  tired  and  so  burdened  with  the  weight  of 
age,  and  so  dulled  and  stupefied  with  trying  to  re 
member  things  they  forgot  before  history  began,  that 
they  give  one  the  feeling  that  they  must  have  been  a 
part  of  original  Creation.  This  is  indeed  one  of  the 
oldest  of  the  princedoms  of  India,  and  has  always 
been  celebrated  for  its  barbaric  pomps  and  splen 
dors,  and  for  the  wealth  of  its  princes. 


CHAPTER    IX. 

It  takes  your  enemy  and  your  friend,  working  together,  to  hurt  you  to  the 
heart ;  the  one  to  slander  you  and  the  other  to  get  the  news  to  you. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

^UT  of  the  town  again;  a  long  drive  through 
open  country,  by  winding  roads  among 
secluded  villages  nestling  in  the  inviting  shade  of 
tropic  vegetation,  a  Sabbath  stillness  everywhere, 
sometimes  a  pervading  sense  of  solitude,  but  always 
barefoot  natives  gliding  by  like  spirits,  without 
sound  of  footfall,  and  others  in  the  distance  dissolv 
ing  away  and  vanishing  like  the  creatures  of  dreams. 
Now  and  then  a  string  of  stately  camels  passed  by  — 
always  interesting  things  to  look  at  —  and  they  were 
velvet-shod  by  nature,  and  made  no  noise.  Indeed, 
there  were  no  noises  of  any  sort  in  this  paradise. 
Yes,  once  there  was  one,  for  a  moment:  a  file  of 
native  convicts  passed  along  in  charge  of  an  officer, 
and  we  caught  the  soft  clink  of  their  chains.  In  a 
retired  spot,  resting  himself  under  a  tree,  was  a  holy 
person  —  a  naked  black  fakeer,  thin  and  skinny, 
and  whitey-gray  all  over  with  ashes. 

By  and  by  to  the  elephant  stables,  and  I  took  a 
ride;  but  it  was  by  request — I  did  not  ask  for  it, 

(96) 


Following  the  Equator  97 

and  didn't  want  it;  but  I  took  it,  because  otherwise 
they  would  have  thought  I  was  afraid,  which  I  was. 
The  elephant  kneels  down,  by  command  —  one  end 
of  him  at  a  time  —  and  you  climb  the  ladder  and 
get  into  the  howdah,  and  then  he  gets  up,  one  end 
at  a  time,  just  as  a  ship  gets  up  over  a  wave;  and 
after  that,  as  he  strides  monstrously  about,  his 
motion  is  much  like  a  ship's  motion.  The  mahout 
bores  into  the  back  of  his  head  with  a  great  iron 
prod,  and  you  wonder  at  his  temerity  and  at  the 
elephant's  patience,  and  you  think  that  perhaps  the 
patience  will  not  last;  but  it  does,  and  nothing  hap 
pens.  The  mahout  talks  to  the  elephant  in  a  low 
voice  all  the  time,  and  the  elephant  seems  to  under 
stand  it  all  and  to  be  pleased  with  it ;  and  he  obeys 
every  order  in  the  most  contented  and  docile  way. 
Among  these  twenty-five  elephants  were  two  which 
were  larger  than  any  I  had  ever  seen  before,  and  if  I 
had  thought  I  could  learn  to  not  be  afraid,  I  would 
have  taken  cne  of  them  while  the  police  were  not 
looking. 

In  the  howdah-house  there  were  many  howdahs 
that  were  made  of  silver,  one  of  gold,  and  one  of 
old  ivory,  and  equipped  with  cushions  and  canopies 
of  rich  and  costly  stuffs.  The  wardrobe  of  the  ele 
phants  was  there,  too ;  vast  velvet  covers  stiff  and 
heavy  with  gold  embroidery ;  and  bells  of  silver  and 
gold ;  and  ropes  of  these  metals  for  fastening  the 
things  on  —  harness,  so  to  speak;  and  monster 
hoops  of  massive  gold  for  the  elephant  to  wear  on 


98  Following  the  Equator 

his  ankles  when  he  is  out  in  procession  on  business 
of  state. 

But  we  did'  not  see  the  treasury  of  crown  jewels, 
and  that  was  a  disappointment,  for  in  mass  and  rich 
ness  it  ranks  only  second  in  India.  By  mistake  we 
were  taken  to  see  the  new  palace  instead,  and  we 
used  up  the  last  remnant  of  our  spare  time  there. 
It  was  a  pity,  too ;  for  the  new  palace  is  mixed 
modern  American-European,  and  has  not  a  merit 
except  costliness.  It  is  wholly  foreign  to  India,  and 
impudent  and  out  of  place.  The  architect  has  es 
caped.  This  comes  of  overdoing  the  suppression  of 
the  Thugs;  they  had  their  merits.  The  old  palace 
is  oriental  and  charming,  and  in  consonance  with 
the  country.  The  old  palace  would  still  be  great  if 
there  were  nothing  of  it  but  the  spacious  and  lofty 
hall  where  the  durbars  are  held.  It  is  not  a  good 
place  to  lecture  in,  on  account  of  the  echoes,  but  it 
is  a  good  place  to  hold  durbars  in  and  regulate  the 
affairs  of  a  kingdom,  and  that  is  what  it  is  for.  If  I 
had  it  I  would  have  a  durbar  every  day,  instead  of 
once  or  twice  a  year. 

The  prince  is  an  educated  gentleman.  His  culture 
is  European.  He  has  been  in  Europe  five  times. 
People  say  that  this  is  costly  amusement  for  him, 
since  in  crossing  the  sea  he  must  sometimes  be 
obliged  to  drink  water  from  vessels  that  are  more  or 
less  public,  and  thus  damage  his  caste.  To  get  it 
purified  again  he  must  make  pilgrimage  to  some 
renowned  Hindoo  temples  and  contribute  a  fortune 


Following  the  Equator  99 

or  two  to  them.  His  people  are  like  the  other 
Hindoos,  profoundly  religious;  and  they  could  not 
be  content  with  a  master  who  was  impure. 

We  failed  to  see  the  jewels,  but  we  saw  the  gold 
cannon  and  the  silver  one  —  they  seemed  to  be  six- 
pounders.  They  were  not  designed  for  business, 
but  for  salutes  upon  rare  and  particularly  important 
state  occasions.  An  ancestor  of  the  present  Gaikwar 
had  the  silver  one  made,  and  a  subsequent  ancestor 
had  the  gold  one  made,  in  order  to  outdo  him. 

This  sort  of  artillery  is  in  keeping  with  the  tradi 
tions  of  Baroda,  which  was  of  old  famous  for  style 
and  show.  It  used  to  entertain  visiting  rajahs  and 
viceroys  with  tiger-fights,  elephant-fights,  illumina 
tions,  and  elephant-processions  of  the  most  glitter 
ing  and  gorgeous  character. 

It  makes  the  circus  a  pale,  poor  thing. 

In  the  train,  during  a  part  of  the  return  journey 
from  Baroda,  we  had  the  company  of  a  gentleman 
who  had  with  him  a  remarkable  looking  dog.  I  had 
not  seen  one  of  its  kind  before,  as  far  as  I  could 
remember;  though  of  course  I  might  have  seen  one 
and  not  noticed  it,  for  I  am  not  acquainted  with 
dogs,  but  only  with  cats.  This  dog's  coat  was 
smooth  and  shiny  and  black,  and  I  think  it  had  tan 
trimmings  around  the  edges  of  the  dog,  and  perhaps 
underneath.  It  was  a  long,  low  dog,  with  very 
short,  strange  legs  —  legs  that  curved  inboard,  some 
thing  like  parentheses  turned  the  wrong  way  (. 
Indeed,  it  was  made  on  the  plan  of  a  bench  for 


100  Following  the  Equator 

length  and  lowness.  It  seemed  to  be  satisfied,  but 
I  thought  the  plan  poor,  and  structurally  weak,  on 
account  of  the  distance  between  the  forward  sup 
ports  and  those  abaft.  With  age  the  dog's  back- 
was  likely  to  sag ;  and  it  seemed  to  me  that  it  would 
have  been  a  stronger  and  more  practicable  dog  if  it 
had  had  some  more  legs.  It  had  not  begun  to  sag 
yet,  but  the  shape  of  the  legs  showed  that  the  undue 
weight  imposed  upon  them  was  beginning  to  tell. 
It  had  a  long  nose,  and  floppy  ears  that  hung  down, 
and  a  resigned  expression  of  countenance.  I  did 
not  like  to  ask  what  kind  of  a  dog  it  was,  or  how  it 
came  to  be  deformed,  for  it  was  plain  that  the 
gentleman  was  very  fond  of  it,  and  naturally  he 
could  be  sensitive  about  it.  From  delicacy  I  thought 
it  best  not  to  seem  to  notice  it  too  much.  No  doubt 
a  man  with  a  dog  like  that  feels  just  as  a  person  does 
who  has  a  child  that  is  out  of  true.  The  gentleman 
was  not  merely  fond  of  the  dog,  he  was  also  proud 
of  it  —  just  the  same,  again,  as  a  mother  feels  about 
her  child  when  it  is  an  idiot.  I  could  see  that  he 
was  proud  of  it,  notwithstanding  it  was  such  a  long 
dog  and  looked  so  resigned  and  pious.  It  had  been 
all  over  the  world  with  him,  and  had  been  pilgriming 
like  that  for  years  and  years.  It  had  traveled  50,000 
miles  by  sea  and  rail,  and  had  ridden  in  front  of 
him  Oii  his  horse  8,000.  It  had  a  silver  medal  from 
the  Geographical  Society  of  Great  Britain  for  its 
travels,  and  I  saw  it.  It  had  won  prizes  in  dog 
shows,  both  in  India  and  in  England  —  I  saw  them. 


Following  the  Equator  101 

He  said  its  pedigree  was  on  record  in  the  Kennel 
Club,  and  that  it  was  a  well-known  dog.  He  said  a 
great  many  people  in  London  could  recognize  it  the 
moment  they  saw  it.  I  did  not  say  anything,  but  I 
did  not  think  it  anything  strange;  I  should  know 
that  dog  again,  myself,  yet  I  am  not  careful  about 
noticing  dogs.  He  said  that  when  he  walked  along 
in  London,  people  often  stopped  and  looked  at  the 
dog.  Of  course  I  did  not  say  anything,  for  I  did 
not  want  to  hurt  his  feelings,  but  I  could  have  ex 
plained  to  him  that  if  you  take  a  great  long  low  dog 
like  that  and  waddle  it  along  the  street  anywhere  in 
the  world  and  not  charge  anything,  people  will  stop 
and  look.  He  was  gratified  because  the  dog  took 
prizes.  But  that  was  nothing;  if  I  were  built  like 
that  I  could  take  prizes  myself.  I  wished  I  knew 
what  kind  of  a  dog  it  was,  and  what  it  was  for,  but 
I  could  not  very  well  ask,  for  that  would  show  that 
I  did  not  know.  Not  that  I  want  a  dog  like  that, 
but  only  to  know  the  secret  of  its  birth. 

I  think  he  was  going  to  hunt  elephants  with  it, 
because  I  know,  from  remarks  dropped  by  him, 
that  he  has  hunted  large  game  in  India  and  Africa, 
and  likes  it.  But  I  think  that  if  he  tries  to  hunt 
elephants  with  it,  he  is  going  to  be  disappointed.  I 
do  not  believe  that  it  is  suited  for  elephants.  It 
lacks  energy,  it  lacks  force  of  character,  it  lacks 
bitterness.  These  things  all  show  in  the  meekness 
and  resignation  of  its  expression.  It  would  not 
attack  an  elephant,  I  am  sure  of  it.  It  might  not 


102  Following  the  Equator 

run  if  it  saw  one  coming,  but  it  looked  to  me  like  a 
dog  that  would  sit  down  and  pray. 

I  wish  he  had  told  me  what  breed  it  was,  if  there 
are  others;  but  I  shall  know  the  dog  next  time,  and 
then  if  I  can  bring  myself  to  it  I  will  put  delicacy 
aside  and  ask.  If  I  seem  strangely  interested  in 
dogs,  I  have  a  reason  for  it;  for  a  dog  saved  me 
from  an  embarrassing  position  once,  and  that  has 
made  me  grateful  to  these  animals ;  and  if  by  study 
I  could  learn  to  tell  some  of  the  kinds  from  the 
others,  I  should  be  greatly  pleased.  I  only  know 
one  kind  apart,  yet,  and  that  is  the  kind  that  saved 
me  that  time.  I  always  know  that  kind  when  I  meet 
it,  and  if  it  is  hungry  or  lost  I  take  care  of  it.  The 
matter  happened  in  this  way : 

It  was  years  and  years  ago.  I  had  received  a 
note  from  Mr.  Augustin  Daly  of  the  Fifth  Avenue 
Theater,  asking  me  to  call  the  next  time  I  should  be 
in  New  York.  I  was  writing  plays,  in  those  days, 
and  he  was  admiring  them  and  trying  to  get  me  a 
chance  to  get  them  played  in  Siberia.  I  took  the 
first  train  —  the  early  one  —  the  one  that  leaves 
Hartford  at  8.29  in  the  morning.  At  New  Haven  I 
bought  a  paper,  and  found  it  filled  with  glaring 
display-lines  about  a  "bench-show"  there.  I  had 
often  heard  of  bench-shows,  but  had  never  felt  any 
interest  in  them,  because  I  supposed  they  were 
lectures  that  were  not  well  attended.  It  turned  out, 
now,  that  it  was  not  that,  but  a  dog-show.  There 
was  a  double-leaded  column  about  the  king-feature 


Following  the  Equator  103 

of  this  one,  which  was  called  a  Saint  Bernard,  and 
was  worth  $10,000,  and  was  known  to  be  the  largest 
and  finest  of  his  species  in  the  world.  I  read  all 
this  with  interest,  because  out  of  my  schoolboy 
readings  I  dimly  remembered  how  the  priests  and 
pilgrims  of  St.  Bernard  used  to  go  out  in  the  storms 
and  dig  these  dogs  out  of  the  snowdrifts  when  lost 
and  exhausted,  and  give  them  brandy  and  save  their 
lives,  and  drag  them  to  the  monastery  and  restore 
them  with  gruel. 

Also,  there  was  a  picture  of  this  prize-dog  in  the 
paper,  a  noble  great  creature  with  a  benignant 
countenance,  standing  by  a  table.  He  was  placed 
in  that  way  so  that  one  could  get  a  right  idea  of  his 
great  dimensions.  You  could  see  that  he  was  just  a 
shade  higher  than  the  table  —  indeed,  a  huge  fellow 
for  a  dog.  Then  there  was  a  description  which  went 
into  the  details.  It  gave  his  enormous  weight  — 
I5°K  pounds,  and  his  length  —  4  feet  2  inches, 
from  stem  to  stern-post ;  and  his  height  —  3  feet  I 
inch,  to  the  top  of  his  back.  The  pictures  and  the 
figures  so  impressed  me,  that  I  could  see  the  beauti 
ful  colossus  before  me,  and  I  kept  on  thinking  about 
him  for  the  next  two  hours;  then  I  reached  New 
York,  and  he  dropped  out  of  my  mind. 

In  the  swirl  and  tumult  of  the  hotel  lobby  I  ran 
across  Mr.  Daly's  comedian,  the  late  James  Lewis, 
of  beloved  memory,  and  I  casually  mentioned  that  I 
was  going  to  call  upon  Mr.  Daly  in  the  evening  at 
8.  He  looked  surprised,  and  said  he  reckoned  not. 


104  Following  the  Equator 

For  answer  I  handed  him  Mr.  Daly's  note.  Its 
substance  was:  tl  Come  to  my  private  den,  over  the 
theater,  where  we  cannot  be  interrupted.  And 
come  by  the  back  way,  not  the  front.  No.  642 
Sixth  Avenue  is  a  cigar  shop ;  pass  through  it  and 
you  are  in  a  paved  court,  with  high  buildings  all 
around ;  enter  the  second  door  on  the  left,  and  come 
up  stairs." 

"Is  this  all?" 

41  Yes,"  I  said. 

44  Well,  you'll  never  get  in." 

44  Why?" 

44  Because  you  won't.  Or  if  you  do  you  can 
draw  on  me  for  a  hundred  dollars ;  for  you  will  be 
the  first  man  that  has  accomplished  it  in  twenty-five 
years.  I  can't  think  what  Mr.  Daly  can  have  been 
absorbed  in.  He  has  forgotten  a  most  important 
detail,  and  he  will  feel  humiliated  in  the  morning 
when  he  finds  that  you  tried  to  get  in  and  couldn't." 

44  Why,  what  is  the  trouble?" 

"  I'll  tell  you.     You  see—" 

At  that  point  we  were  swept  apart  by  the  crowd, 
somebody  detained  me  with  a  moment's  talk,  and 
we  did  not  get  together  again.  But  it  did  not 
matter;  I  believed  he  was  joking,  anyway. 

At  eight  in  the  evening  I  passed  through  the  cigar 
shop  and  into  the  court  and  knocked  at  the  second 
door. 

44  Come  in!" 

I  entered.    It  was  a  small  room,  carpetless,  dusty,. 


Following  the  Equator  105 

with  a  naked  deal  table,  and  two  cheap  wooden 
chairs  for  furniture.  A  giant  Irishman  was  standing 
there,  with  shirt  collar  and  vest  unbuttoned,  and  no 
coat  on.  I  put  my  hat  on  the  table,  and  was  about 
to  say  something,  when  the  Irishman  took  the  inn 
ings  himself.  And  not  with  marked  courtesy  of 
tone: 

11  Well,  sor,  what  will  you  have?" 

I  was  a  little  disconcerted,  and  my  easy  confidence 
suffered  a  shrinkage.  The  man  stood  as  motionless 
as  Gibraltar,  and  kept  his  unblinking  eye  upon  me. 
It  was  very  embarrassing,  very  humiliating.  I  stam 
mered  at  a  false  start  or  two  ;  then  : 

"  I  have  just  run  down  from—" 

"Avye  plaze,  ye'll  not  smoke  here,  ye  under 
stand." 

I  laid  my  cigar  on  the  window-ledge  ;  chased  my 
flighty  thoughts  a  moment,  then  said  in  a  placating 


manner: 
'* 


I  —  I  have  come  to  see  Mr.  Daly." 

"  Oh,  ye  have,  have  ye?" 

"Yes." 

"Well,  ye'll  not  see  him.'1 

"  But  he  asked  me  to  come." 

"Oh,  \\&did>  did  he?" 
'  Yes,  he  sent  me  this  note,  and  —  " 

"Lemme  see  it." 

For  a  moment  I  fancied  there  would  be  a  change 
in  the  atmosphere,  now;  but  this  idea  was  prema 
ture.  The  big  man  \vas  examining  the  note  search- 


106  Following  the  Equatot 

ingly  under  the  gas-jet.  A  glance  showed  me  that 
he  had  it  upside  down  —  disheartening  evidence  that 
he  could  not  read. 

"  Is  ut  his  own  hand-write?" 

11  Yes  —  he  wrote  it  himself." 

"Redid,  did  he?" 

41  Yes." 

"  H'm.    Well,  then,  why  ud  he  write  it  like  that?" 

11  How  do  you  mean?" 

"  I  mane,  why  wudn't  he  put  his  name  to  ut?" 

"His  name  is  to  it.  That's  not  it  —  you  are 
locking  at  my  name." 

I  thought  that  that  was  a  home  shot,  but  he  did 
not  betray  that  he  had  been  hit.  He  said  : 

"  It's  not  an  aisy  one  to  spell;  how  do  you  pro 
nounce  ut?" 

"Mark  Twain." 

"H'm.  H'm.  Mike  Train.  H'm.  I  don't  re 
member  ut.  What  is  it  ye  want  to  see  him  about?" 

"  It  isn't  I  that  want  to  see  him,  he  wants  to  see 
me." 

"Oh,  he  does,  does  he?" 

"Yes." 

"  What  does  he  want  to  see  ye  about?" 

"I  don't  know." 

"Ye  don't  know!  And  ye  confess  it,  becod ! 
Well,  I  can  tell  ye  wan  thing  —  ye'll  not  see  him. 
Are  ye  in  the  business?" 

"What  business?" 

"  The  show  business." 


Following  the  Equator  107 

A  fatal  question.  I  recognized  that  I  was  de 
feated.  If  I  answered  no,  he  would  cut  the  matter 
short  and  wave  me  to  the  door  without  the  grace  of 
a  word  —  I  saw  it  in  his  uncompromising  eye ;  if  I 
said  I  was  a  lecturer,  he  would  despise  me,  and  dis 
miss  me  with  opprobrious  words ;  if  I  said  I  was  a 
dramatist,  he  would  throw  me  out  of  the  window. 
I  saw  that  my  case  was  hopeless,  so  I  chose  the 
course  which  seemed  least  humiliating:  I  would 
pocket  my  shame  and  glide  out  without  answering. 
The  silence  was  growing  lengthy. 

"  I'L  ask  ye  again.  Are  ye  in  the  show  business 
yerself?" 

"Yes!" 

I  said   it  with  splendid   confidence;    for  in  that 
moment  the  very  twin  of  that  grand   New   Haven 
dog  loafed  into  the  room,  and  I  saw  that  Irishman's 
eye  light  eloquently  with  pride  and  affection. 

"  Ye  are?     And  what  is  it?" 

II  I've  got  a  bench-show  in  New  Haven." 
The  weather  did  change  then. 

"You  don't  say,  sir!  And  that's  your  show, 
sir!  Oh,  it's  a  grand  show,  it's  a  wonderful  show, 
sir,  and  a  proud  man  I  am  to  see  your  honor  this 
day.  And  ye'll  be  an  expert,  sir,  and  ye'll  know 
all  about  dogs  —  more  than  ever  they  know  their- 
selves,  I'll  take  me  oath  to  ut." 

I  said,  with  modesty: 

"  I  believe  I  have  some  reputation  that  way.  In 
fact,  my  business  requires  it." 


108  Following  the  Equator 

'Ye  have  some  reputation,  your  honor!  Bedad 
I  believe  you !  There's  not  a  jintleman  in  the 
worrld  that  can  lay  over  ye  in  the  judgmint  of  a 
dog,  sir.  Now  I'll  vinture  that  your  honor'll  know 
that  dog's  dimensions  there  better  than  he  knows 
them  his  own  self,  and  just  by  the  casting  of  your 
educated  eye  upon  him.  Would  you  mind  giving  a 
guess,  if  ye'll  be  so  good?" 

I  knew  that  upon  my  answer  would  depend  my 
fate.  If  I  made  this  dog  bigger  than  the  prize-dog, 
it  would  be  bad  diplomacy,  and  suspicious;  if  I  fell 
too  far  short  of  the  prize-dog,  that  would  be  equally 
damaging.  The  dog  was  standing  by  the  table,  and 
I  believed  I  knew  the  difference  between  him  and 
the  one  whose  picture  I  had  seen  in  the  newspaper 
to  a  shade.  I  spoke  promptly  up  and  said : 

"  It's  no  trouble  to  guess  this  noble  creature's 
figures:  height,  three  feet;  length,  four  feet  and 
three-quarters  of  an  inch;  weight,  a  hundred  and 
forty-eight  and  a  quarter." 

The  man  snatched  his  hat  from  its  peg  and  danced 
on  it  with  joy,  shouting: 

'  Ye've  hardly  missed  it  the  hair's  breadth,  hardly 
the  shade  of  a  shade,  your  honor!  Oh,  it's  the 
miraculous  eye  ye've  got,  for  the  judgmint  of  a  dog  ! ' ' 

And  still  pouring  out  his  admiration  of  my 
capacities,  he  snatched  off  his  vest  and  scoured  off 
one  of  the  wooden  chairs  with  it,  and  scrubbed  it 
and  polished  it,  and  said : 

"There,   sit  down,  your  honor,  I'm  ashamed  of 


"  YOUR  HONOR'LL  KNOW  THAT  DOG'S  DIMENSIONS  " 


SITY 


Following  the  Equator  109 

meself  that  I  forgot  ye  were  standing  all  this  time ; 
and  do  put  on  your  hat,  ye  mustn't  take  cold,  it's  a 
drafty  place;  and  here  is  your  cigar,  sir,  a  getting 
cold,  I'll  give  ye  a  light.  There.  The  place  is  all 
yours,  sir,  and  if  ye'll  just  put  your  feet  on  the 
table  and  make  yourself  at  home,  I'll  stir  around 
and  get  a  candle  and  light  ye  up  the  ould  crazy 
stairs  and  see  that  ye  don't  come  to  anny  harm,  for 
be  this  time  Mr.  Daly '11  be  that  impatient  to  see 
your  honor  that  he'll  be  taking  the  roof  off." 

He  conducted  me  cautiously  and  tenderly  up  the 
stairs,  lighting  the  way  and  protecting  me  with 
friendly  warnings,  then  pushed  the  door  open  and 
bowed  me  in  and  went  his  way,  mumbling  hearty 
things  about  my  wonderful  eye  for  points  of  a  dog. 
Mr.  Daly  was  writing  and  had  his  back  to  me.  He 
glanced  over  his  shoulder  presently,  then  jumped 
up  and  said : 

"  Oh,  dear  me,  I  forgot  all  about  giving  instruc 
tions.  I  was  just  writing  you  to  beg  a  thousand 
pardons.  But  how  is  it  you  are  here?  How  did 
you  get  by  that  Irishman?  You  are  the  first  man 
that's  done  it  in  five  and  twenty  years.  You  didn't 
bribe  him,  I  know  that;  there's  not  money  enough 
in  New  York  to  do  it.  And  you  didn't  persuade 
him;  he  is  all  ice  and  iron:  there  isn't  a  soft  place 
nor  a  warm  one  in  him  anywhere.  What  is  your 
secret?  Look  here;  you  owe  me  a  hundred  dollars 
for  unintentionally  giving  you  a  chance  to  perform  a 

miracle  —  for  it  is  a  miracle  that  you've  done." 

8** 


110  Following  the  Equator 

"  That  is  all  right,"  I  said,  "  collect  it  of  Jimmy 
Lewis." 

That  good  dog  not  only  did  me  that  good  turn  in 
the  time  of  my  need,  but  he  won  for  me  the  envious 
reputation  among  all  the  theatrical  people  from  the 
Atlantic  to  the  Pacific  of  being  the  only  man  in 
history  who  had  ever  run  the  blockade  of  Augustin 
Daly's  back  door. 


CHAPTER   X. 

If  the  desire  to  kill  and  the  opportunity  to  kill  came  always  together,  who 
would  escape  hanging? — Pudd'rhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

ON  the  Train.  Fifty  years  ago,  when  I  was  a 
boy  in  the  then  remote  and  sparsely  peopled 
Mississippi  valley,  vague  tales  and  rumors  of  a 
mysterious  body  of  professional  murderers  came 
wandering  in  from  a  country  which  was  construc 
tively  as  far  from  us  as  the  constellations  blinking  in 
space  —  India;  vague  tales  and  rumors  of  a  sect 
called  Thugs,  who  waylaid  travelers  in  lonely  places 
and  killed  them  for  the  contentment  of  a  god  whom 
they  worshiped ;  tales  which  everybody  liked  to 
listen  to  and  nobody  believed  —  except  with  reserva 
tions.  It  was  considered  that  the  stories  had  gath 
ered  bulk  on  their  travels.  The  matter  died  down 
and  a  lull  followed.  Then  Eugene  Sue's  "  Wander 
ing  Jew"  appeared,  and  made  great  talk  for  a 
while.  One  character  in  it  was  a  chief  of  Thugs  — 
14  Feringhea  " — a  mysterious  and  terrible  Indian 
who  was  as  slippery  and  sly  as  a  serpent,  and  as 
deadly;  and  he  stirred  up  the  Thug  interest  once 
more.  But  it  did  not  last.  It  presently  died  again 
—  this  time  to  stay  dead. 

(in) 


112  Following  the  Equator 

At  first  glance  it  seems  strange  that  this  should 
have  happened ;  but  really  it  was  not  strange  —  on 
the  contrary,  it  was  natural ;  I  mean  on  our  side  of 
the  water.  For  the  source  whence  the  Thug  tales 
mainly  came  was  a  Government  Report,  and  without 
doubt  was  not  republished  in  America;  it  was  prob 
ably  never  even  seen  there.  Government  Reports 
have  no  general  circulation.  They  are  distributed 
to  the  few,  and  are  not  always  read  by  those  few. 
I  heard  of  this  Report  for  the  first  time  a  day  or  two 
ago,  and  borrowed  it.  It  is  full  of  fascinations; 
and  it  turns  those  dim,  dark  fairy  tales  of  my  boy 
hood  days  into  realities. 

The  Report  was  made  in  1839  by  Major  Sleeman, 
of  the  Indian  Service,  and  was  printed  in  Calcutta  in 
1840.  It  is  a  clumsy,  great,  fat,  poor  sample  of 
the  printer's  art,  but  good  enough  for  a  government 
printing-office  in  that  old  day  and  in  that  remote 
region,  perhaps.  To  Major  Sleeman  was  given  the 
general  superintendence  of  the  giant  task  of  ridding 
India  of  Thuggee,  and  he  and  his  seventeen  assist 
ants  accomplished  it.  It  was  the  Augean  Stables 
over  again.  Captain  Vallancey,  writing  in  a  Madras 
journal  in  those  old  times,  makes  this  remark: 

The  day  that  sees  this  far-spread  evil  eradicated  from  India  and 
known  only  in  name,  will  greatly  tend  to  immortalize  British  rule  in  the 
East." 

He  did  not  overestimate  the  magnitude  and  diffi 
culty  of  the  work,  nor  the  immensity  of  the  credit 
which  would  justly  be  due  to  British  rule  in  case  it 
was  accomplished. 


Following  the  Equator  113 

Thuggee  became  known  to  the  British  authorities 
in  India  about  1810,  but  its  wide  prevalence  was  not 
suspected ;  it  was  not  regarded  as  a  serious  matter, 
and  no  systematic  measures  were  taken  for  its  sup 
pression  until  about  1830.  About  that  time  Major 
Sleeman  captured  Eugene  Sue's  Thug-chief,  "Fer 
inghea,"  and  got  him  to  turn  King's  evidence.  The 
revelations  were  so  stupefying  that  Sleeman  was  not 
able  to  believe  them.  Sleeman  thought  he  knew 
every  criminal  within  his  jurisdiction,  and  that  the 
worst  of  them  were  merely  thieves ;  but  Feringhea 
told  him  that  he  was  in  reality  living  in  the  midst  of 
a  swarm  of  professional  murderers ;  that  they  had 
been  all  about  him  for  many  years,  and  that  they 
buried  their  dead  close  by.  These  seemed  insane 
tales ;  but  Feringhea  said  come  and  see  —  and  he 
took  him  to  a  grave  and  dug  up  a  hundred  bodies, 
and  told  him  all  the  circumstances  of  the  killings, 
and  named  the  Thugs  who  had  done  the  work.  It 
was  a  staggering  business.  Sleeman  captured  some 
of  these  Thugs  and  proceeded  to  examine  them 
separately,  and  with  proper  precautions  against 
collusion;  for  he  would  not  believe  any  Indian's 
unsupported  word.  The  evidence  gathered  proved 
the  truth  of  what  Feringhea  had  said,  and  also  re 
vealed  the  fact  that  gangs  of  Thugs  were  plying  their 
trade  all  over  India.  The  astonished  government 
now  took  hold  of  Thuggee,  and  for  ten  years  made 
systematic  and  relentless  war  upon  it,  and  finally 
destroyed  it.  Gang  after  gang  was  captured,  tried, 


114  Following  the  Equator 

and  punished.  The  Thugs  were  harried  and  hunted 
from  one  end  of  India  to  the  other.  The  govern 
ment  got  all  their  secrets  out  of  them ;  and  also  got 
the  names  of  the  members  of  the  bands,  and  recorded 
them  in  a  book,  together  with  their  birthplaces  and 
places  of  residence. 

The  Thugs  were  worshipers  of  Bhowanee ;  and  to 
this  god  they  sacrificed  anybody  that  came  handy ; 
but  they  kept  the  dead  man's  things  themselves,  for 
the  god  cared  for  nothing  but  the  corpse.  Men 
were  initiated  into  the  sect  with  solemn  ceremonies. 
Then  they  were  taught  how  to  strangle  a  person  with 
the  sacred  choke-cloth,  but  were  not  allowed  to 
perform  officially  with  it  until  after  long  practice. 
No  half-educated  strangler  could  choke  a  man  to 
death  quickly  enough  to  keep  him  from  uttering  a 
sound  —  a  muffled  scream,  gurgle,  gasp,  moan,  or 
something  of  the  sort;  but  the  expert's  work  was 
instantaneous:  the  cloth  was  whipped  around  the 
victim's  neck,  there  was  a  sudden  twist,  and  the 
head  fell  silently  forward,  the  eyes  starting  from  the 
sockets;  and  all  was  over.  The  Thug  carefully 
guarded  against  resistance.  It  was  usual  to  get  the 
victims  to  sit  down,  for  that  was  the  handiest  position 
for  business. 

If  the  Thug  had  planned  India  itself  it  could  not 
have  been  more  conveniently  arranged  for  the  needs 
of  his  occupation.  There  were  no  public  convey 
ances.  There  were  no  conveyances  for  hire,  The 
traveler  went  on  foot  or  in  a  buliock  cart  or  on  a 


Following  the  Equator  115 

horse  which  he  bought  for  the  purpose.  As  soon 
as  he  was  out  of  his  own  little  state  or  principality 
he  was  among  strangers;  nobody  knew  him,  nobody 
took  note  of  him,  and  from  that  time  his  movements 
could  no  longer  be  traced.  He  did  not  stop  in 
towns  or  villages,  but  camped  outside  of  them  and 
sent  his  servants  in  to  buy  provisions.  There  were 
no  habitations  between  villages.  Whenever  he  was 
between  villages  he  was  an  easy  prey,  particularly 
as  he  usually  traveled  by  night,  to  avoid  the  heat. 
He  was  always  being  overtaken  by  strangers  who 
offered  him  the  protection  of  their  company,  or 
asked  for  the  protection  of  his  —  and  these  strangers 
were  often  Thugs,  as  he  presently  found  out  to  his 
cost.  The  landholders,  the  native  police,  the  petty 
princes,  the  village  officials,  the  customs  officers 
were  in  many  cases  protectors  and  harborers  of  the 
Thugs,  and  betrayed  travelers  to  them  for  a  share 
of  the  spoil.  At  first  this  condition  of  things  made 
it  next  to  impossible  for  the  government  to  catch 
the  marauders;  they  were  spirited  away  by  these 
watchful  friends.  All  through  a  vast  continent,  thus 
infested,  helpless  people  of  every  caste  and  kind 
moved  along  the  paths  and  trails  in  couples  and 
groups  silently  by  night,  carrying  the  commerce  of 
the  country  —  treasure,  jewels,  money,  and  petty 
batches  of  silks,  spices,  and  all  manner  of  wares.  It 
was  a  paradise  for  the  Thug. 

When   the   autumn   opened,  the  Thugs   began  to 
gather  together  by  pre-concert.     Other  people  had 


116  Following  the  Equator 

to  have  interpreters  at  every  turn,  but  not  the 
Thugs ;  they  could  talk  together,  no  matter  how  far 
apart  they  were  born,  for  they  had  a  language  of 
their  own,  and  they  had  secret  signs  by  which  they 
knew  each  other  for  Thugs ;  and  they  were  always 
friends.  Even  their  diversities  of  religion  and  caste 
were  sunk  in  devotion  to  their  calling,  and  the  Mos 
lem  and  the  high-caste  and  low-caste  Hindoo  were 
staunch  and  affectionate  brothers  in  Thuggery. 

When  a  gang  had  been  assembled,  they  had 
religious  worship,  and  waited  for  an  omen.  They 
had  definite  notions  about  the  omens.  The  cries  of 
certain  animals  were  good  omens,  the  cries  of  cer 
tain  other  creatures  were  bad  omens.  A  bad  omen 
would  stop  proceedings  and  send  the  men  home. 

The  sword  and  the  strangling-cloth  were  sacred 
emblems.  The  Thugs  worshiped  the  sword  at  home 
before  going  out  to  the  assembling-place;  the 
strangling-cloth  was  worshiped  at  the  place  of 
assembly.  The  chiefs  of  most  of  the  bands  per 
formed  the  religious  ceremonies  themselves ;.  but  the 
Kaets  delegated  them  to  certain  official  stranglers 
(Chaurs).  The  rites  of  the  Kaets  were  so  holy  that 
no  one  but  the  Chaur  was  allowed  to  touch  the 
vessels  and  other  things  used  in  them. 

Thug  methods  exhibited  a  curious  mixture  of 
caution  and  the  absence  of  it;  cold  business  calcula 
tion  and  sudden,  unreflecting  impulse;  but  there 
were  two  details  which  were  constant,  and  not  sub 
ject  to  caprice :  patient  persistence  in  following  up 


Following  the  Equator  117 

the   prey,  and   pitilessness  when   the   time   came  to 
act. 

Caution  was  exhibited  in  the  strength  of  the 
bands.  They  never  felt  comfortable  and  confident 
unless  their  strength  exceeded  that  of  any  party  of 
travelers  they  were  likely  to  meet  by  four  or  five 
fold.  Yet  it  was  never  their  purpose  to  attack 
openly,  but  only  when  the  victims  were  off  their 
guard.  When  they  got  hold  of  a  party  of  travelers 
they  often  moved  along  in  their  company  several 
days,  using  all  manner  of  arts  to  win  their  friendship 
and  get  their  confidence.  At  last,  when  this  was 
accomplished  to  their  satisfaction,  the  real  business 
began.  A  few  Thugs  were  privately  detached  and 
sent  forward  in  the  dark  to  select  a  good  killing- 
place  and  dig  the  graves.  When  the  rest  reached 
the  spot  a  halt  was  called,  for  a  rest  or  a  smoke. 
The  travelers  were  invited  to  sit.  By  signs,  the 
chief  appointed  certain  Thugs  to  sit  down  in  front 
of  the  travelers  as  if  to  wait  upon  them,  others  to 
sit  down  beside  them  and  engage  them  in  conversa 
tion,  and  certain  expert  stranglers  to  stand  behind 
the  travelers  and  be  ready  when  the  signal  was 
given.  The  signal  was  usually  some  commonplace 
remark,  like  "Bring  the  tobacco."  Sometimes  a 
considerable  wait  ensued  after  all  the  actors  were 
in  their  places  —  the  chief  was  biding  his  time,  in 
order  to  make  everything  sure.  Meantime,  the  talk 
droned  on,  dim  figures  moved  about  in  the  dull 
light,  peace  and  tranquillity  reigned,  the  travelers 


118  Following  the  Equator 

resigned  themselves  to  the  pleasant  reposefulness 
and  comfort  of  the  situation,  unconscious  of  the 
death-angels  standing  motionless  at  their  backs. 
The  time  was  ripe,  now,  and  the  signal  came: 
4 'Bring  the  tobacco."  There  was  a  mute  swift 
movement,  all  in  the  same  instant  the  men  at  each 
victim's  sides  seized  his  hands,  the  man  in  front 
seized  his  feet,  and  pulled,  the  man  at  his  back 
whipped  the  cloth  around  his  neck  and  gave  it  a 
twist — the  head  sunk  forward,  the  tragedy  was 
over.  The  bodies  were  stripped  and  covered  up  in 
the  graves,  the  spoil  packed  for  transportation,  then 
the  Thugs  gave  pious  thanks  to  Bhowanee,  and  de 
parted  on  further  holy  service. 

The  Report  shows  that  the  travelers  moved  in  ex 
ceedingly  small  groups  —  twos,  threes,  fours,  as  a 
rule;  a  party  with  a  dozen  in  it  was  rare.  The 
Thugs  themselves  seem  to  have  been  the  only  people 
who  moved  in  force.  They  went  about  in  gangs  of 
10,  15,  25,  40,  60,  100,  150,  200,  250,  and  one 
gang  of  310  is  mentioned.  Considering  their  num 
bers,  their  catch  was  not  extraordinary  —  particu 
larly  when  you  consider  that  they  were  not  in  the 
least  fastidious,  but  took  anybody  they  could  get, 
whether  rich  or  poor,  and  sometimes  even  killed 
children.  Now  and  then  they  killed  women,  but  it 
was  considered  sinful  to  do  it,  and  unlucky.  The 
"season"  was  six  or  eight  months  long.  One 
season  the  half  dozen  Bundelkand  and  Gwalior  gangs 
aggregated  712  men,  and  they  murdered  210  people. 


Following  the  Equator  119 

One  season  the  Malwa  and  Kandeish  gangs  aggre 
gated  702  men,  and  they  murdered  232.  One 
season  the  Kandeish  and  Berar  gangs  aggregated 
963  men,  and  they  murdered  385  people. 

Here  is  the  tally-sheet  of  a  gang  of  sixty  Thugs 
for  a  whole  season  —  gang  under  two  noted  chiefs, 
"  Chotee  and  Sheik  Nungoo  from  Gwalior  "  : 

"Left  Poora,  in  Jhansee,  and  on  arrival  at  Sarora  murdered  a 
traveler. 

"On  nearly  reaching  Bhopal,  met  3  Brahmins,  and  murdered  them. 

"Cross  the  Nerbudda ;  at  a  village  called  Hutteea,  murdered  a 
Hindoo. 

"  Went  through  Aurungabad  to  Walagow;  there  met  a  Havildar  of 
the  barber  caste  and  5  sepoys  (native  soldiers);  in  the  evening  came  to 
Jokur,  and  in  the  morning  killed  them  near  the  place  where  the  treasure- 
bearers  were  killed  the  year  before. 

"  Between  Jokur  and  Dholeea  met  a  sepoy  of  the  shepherd  caste  ; 
killed  him  in  the  jungle. 

"  Passed  through  Dholeea  and  lodged  in  a  village;  two  miles  beyond, 
on  the  road  to  Indore,  met  a  Byragee  (beggar  —  holy  mendicant);  mur 
dered  him  at  the  Thapa. 

"  In  the  morning,  beyond  the  Thapa,  fell  in  with  3  Marwarie  trav 
elers  ;  murdered  them. 

"  Near  a  village  on  the  banks  of  the  Taptee  met  4  travelers  and 
killed  them. 

"  Between  Choupra  and  Dhoreea  met  a  Marwarie  ;   murdered  him. 

"  At  Dhoreea  met  3  Marwaries  ;  took  them  two  miles  and  murdered 
them. 

"Two  miles  further  on,  overtaken  by  three  treasure-bearers ;  took 
them  two  miles  and  murdered  them  in  the  jungle. 

"  Came  on  to  Khurgore  Bateesa  in  Indore,  divided  spoil,  and  dis 
persed. 

"  A  total  of  27  men  murdered  on  one  expedition." 

Chotee  (to  save  his  neck)  was  informer,  and 
furnished  these  facts.  Several  things  are  noticeable 
about  his  resume,  i.  Business  brevity;  2,  absence 


120  Following  the  Equator 

of  emotion;  3,  smallness  of  the  parties  encountered 
by  the  60;  4,  variety  in  character  and  quality  of 
the  game  captured ;  5 ,  Hindoo  and  Mohammedan 
chiefs  in  business  together  for  Bhowanee;  6,  the 
sacred  caste  of  the  Brahmins  not  respected  by 
either;  7,  nor  yet  the  character  of  that  mendicant, 
that  Byragee. 

A  beggar  is  a  holy  creature,  and  some  of  the 
gangs  spared  him  on  that  account,  no  matter  how 
slack  business  might  be  ;  but  other  gangs  slaughtered 
not  only  him,  but  even  that  sacredest  of  sacred 
creatures,  the  fakeer — that  repulsive  skin-and-bone 
thing  that  goes  around  naked  and  mats  his  bushy 
hair  with  dust  and  dirt,  and  so  beflours  his  lean 
body  with  ashes  that  he  looks  like  a  specter. 
Sometimes  a  fakeer  trusted  a  shade  too  far  in  the 
protection  of  his  sacredness.  In  the  middle  of  a 
tally-sheet  of  Feringhea's,  who  had  been  out  with 
forty  Thugs,  I  find  a  case  of  the  kind.  After  the 
killing  of  thirty-nine  men  and  one  woman,  the  fakeer 
appears  on  the  scene : 

"Approaching  Doregow,  met  3  pundits;  also  a  fakeer,  mounted 
on  a  pony  ;  he  was  plastered  over  with  sugar  to  collect  flies,  and  was 
covered  with  them.  Drove  off  the  fakeer,  and  killed  the  other  three. 

"  Leaving  Doregow,  the  fakeer  joined  again,  and  went  on  in  com 
pany  to  Raojana  ;  met  6  Khutries  on  their  way  from  Bombay  to  Nag- 
pore.  Drove  off  the  fakeer  with  stones,  and  killed  the  6  men  in  camp, 
and  buried  them  in  the  grove. 

"  Next  day  the  fakeer  joined  again  ;  made  him  leave  at  Mana.  Be 
yond  there  fell  in  with  two  Kahars  and  a  sepoy,  and  came  on  towards 
the  place  selected  for  the  murder.  When  near  it,  the  fakeer  came 
again.  Losing  all  patience  with  him,  gave  Mithoo,  one  of  the  gang, 


Following  the  Equator  121 

5  rupees  ($2.50)  to  murder  him,  and  take  the  sin  upon  himself.  All 
four  were  strangled,  including  the  fakeer.  Surprised  to  find  among  the 
fakeer's  effects  30  pounds  of  coral,  350  strings  of  small  pearls,  15 
strings  of  large  pearls,  and  a  gilt  necklace." 

It  is  curious,  the  little  effect  that  time  has  upon  a 
really  interesting  circumstance.  This  one,  so  old, 
so  long  ago  gone  down  into  oblivion,  reads  with  the 
same  freshness  and  charm  that  attach  to  the  news  in 
the  morning  paper;  one's  spirits  go  up,  then  down, 
then  up  again,  following  the  chances  which  the 
fakeer  is  running;  now  you  hope,  now  you  despair, 
now  you  hope  again ;  and  at  last  everything  comes 
out  right,  and  you  feel  a  great  wave  of  personal 
satisfaction  go  weltering  through  you,  and,  without 
thinking,  you  put  out  your  hand  to  pat  Mithoo  on 
the  back,  when  —  puff!  the  whole  thing  has  van 
ished  away,  there  is  nothing  there ;  Mithoo  and  all 
the  crowd  have  been  dust  and  ashes  and  forgotten, 
oh,  so  many,  many,  many  lagging  years !  And 
then  comes  a  sense  of  injury:  you  don't  know 
whether  Mithoo  got  the  swag,  along  with  the  sin,  or 
had  to  divide  up  the  swag  and  keep  all  the  sin  him 
self.  There  is  no  literary  art  about  a  government 
report.  It  stops  a  story  right  in  the  most  interest 
ing  place. 

These  reports  of  Thug  expeditions  run  along 
interminably  in  one  monotonous  tune:  "Met  a 
sepoy  —  killed  him;  met  5  pundits  —  killed  them; 
met  4  Rajpoots  and  a  woman  —  killed  them  " —  and 
so  on,  till  the  statistics  get  to  be  pretty  dry.  But 
this  small  trip  of  Feringhea's  Forty  had  some  little 


122  Following  the  Equator 

variety  about  it.  Once  they  came  across  a  man 
hiding  in  a  grave  —  a  thief;  he  had  stolen  1,100 
rupees  from  Dhunroj  Seith  of  Parowtee.  They 
strangled  him  and  took  the  money.  They  had  no 
patience  with  thieves.  They  killed  two  treasure- 
bearers,  and  got  4,000  rupees.  They  came  across 
two  bullocks  "laden  with  copper  pice,"  and  killed 
the  four  drivers  and  took  the  money.  There  must 
have  been  half  a  ton  of  it.  I  think  it  takes  a  double 
handful  of  pice  to  make  an  anna,  and  16  annas  to 
make  a  rupee ;  and  even  in  those  days  the  rupee  was 
worth  only  half  a  dollar.  Coming  back  over  their 
tracks  from  Baroda,  they  had  another  picturesque 
stroke  of  luck:  "  The  Lohars  of  Oodeypore  "  put  a 
traveler  in  their  charge  "for  safety."  Dear,  dear, 
across  this  abysmal  gulf  of  time  we  still  see  Fering- 
hea's  lips  uncover  his  teeth,  and  through  the  dim 
haze  we  catch  the  incandescent  glimmer  of  his  smile. 
He  accepted  that  trust,  good  man;  and  so  we  know 
what  went  with  the  traveler. 

Even  Rajahs  had  no  terrors  for  Feringhea;  he 
came  across  an  elephant-driver  belonging  to  the 
Rajah  of  Oodeypore  and  promptly  strangled  him. 

"  A  total  of  100  men  and  5  women  murdered  on 
this  expedition." 

Among  the  reports  of  expeditions  we  find  men 
tion  of  victims  of  almost  every  quality  and  estate : 

Native  soldiers.  Chuprassies.  Women  servants  seeking 

Fakeers.  Treasure-bearers.  work. 

Mendicants.  Children.  Shepherds. 

Holy-water  carriers.  Cowherds.  Archers. 


Following  the  Equator  123 

Carpenters.  Gardeners.  Table-waiters. 

Peddlers.  Shopkeepers.  Weavers. 

Tailors.  Palanquin-bearers.  Priests. 

Blacksmiths.  Farmers.  Bankers. 

Policemen  (native).        Bullock-drivers.  Boatmen. 

Pastry  cooks.  Male  servants  seeking     Merchants. 

Grooms.  work.  Grass-cutters. 

Mecca  pilgrims. 

Also  a  prince's  cook;  and  even  the  water-carrier 
of  that  sublime  lord  of  lords  and  king  of  kings,  the 
Governor-General  of  India  !  How  broad  they  were 
in  their  tastes!  They  also  murdered  actors  —  poor 
wandering  barn-stormers.  There  are  two  instances 
recorded ;  the  first  one  by  a  gang  of  Thugs  under  a 
chief  who  soils  a  great  name  borne  by  a  better  man 
—  Kipling's  deathless  "  Gungadin  "  : 

"  After  murdering  4  sepoys,  going  on  toward  Indore,  met  4  strolling 
players,  and  persuaded  them  to  come  with  us,  on  the  pretense  that  we 
would  see  their  performance  at  the  next  stage.  Murdered  them  at  a 
temple  near  Bhopal." 

Second  instance: 

"  At  Deohuttee,  joined  by  comedians.  Murdered  them  eastward  of 
that  place." 

But  this  gang  was  a  particularly  bad  crew.  On 
that  expedition  they  murdered  a  fakeer  and  twelve 
beggars.  And  yet  Bhowanee  protected  them;  for 
once  when  they  were  strangling  a  man  in  a  wood 
when  a  crowd  was  going  by  close  at  hand  and  the 
noose  slipped  and  the  man  screamed,  Bhowanee 
made  a  camel  burst  out  at  the  same  moment  with  a  roar 
that  drowned  the  scream ;  and  before  the  man  could 
repeat  it  the  breath  was  choked  out  of  his  body. 


124  Following  the  Equator 

The  cow  is  so  sacred  in  India  that  to  kill  her 
keeper  is  an  awful  sacrilege,  and  even  the  Thugs 
recognized  this ;  yet  now  and  then  the  lust  for  blood 
was  too  strong,  and  so  they  did  kill  a  few  cow- 
keepers.  In  one  of  these  instances  the  witness  who 
killed  the  cowherd  said,  "  In  Thuggee  this  is  strictly 
forbidden,  and  is  an  act  from  which  no  good  can 
come.  I  was  ill  of  a  fever  for  ten  days  afterward. 
I  do  believe  that  evil  will  follow  the  murder  of  a 
man  with  a  cow.  If  there  be  no  cow  it  does  not 
signify."  Another  Thug  said  he  held  the  cowherd's 
feet  while  this  witness  did  the  strangling.  He  felt 
no  concern,  "because  the  bad  fortune  of  such  a 
deed  is  upon  the  strangler  and  not  upon  the  assist 
ants ;  even  if  there  should  be  a  hundred  of  them." 

There  were  thousands  of  Thugs  roving  over  India 
constantly,  during  many  generations.  They  made 
Thuggee  a  hereditary  vocation  and  taught  it  to  their 
sons  and  to  their  sons'  sons.  Boys  were  in  full 
membership  as  early  as  16  years  of  age;  veterans 
were  still  at  work  at  70.  What  was  the  fascination, 
what  was  the  impulse?  Apparently,  it  was  partly 
piety,  largely  gain,  and  there  is  reason  to  suspect 
that  the  sport  afforded  was  the  chiefest  fascination  of 
all.  Meadows  Taylor  makes  a  Thug  in  one  of  his 
books  claim  that  the  pleasure  of  killing  men  was  the 
white  man's  beast-hunting  instinct  enlarged,  refined, 
ennobled.  I  will  quote  the  passage: 


!  ^l€- 


CHAPTER   XI. 

Simple  rules  for  saving  money :  To  save  half,  when  you  are  fired  by  an  eager 
impulse  to  contribute  to  a  charity,  wait,  and  count  forty.  To  save  three- 
quarters,  count  sixty.  To  save  it  all,  count  sixty-five. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  Thug  said : 
"  How  many  of  you  English  are  passionately  devoted  to  sport 
ing  !  Your  days  and  months  are  passed  in  its  excitement.  A  tiger,  a 
panther,  a  buffalo,  or  a  hog  rouses  your  utmost  energies  for  its  destruc 
tion —  you  even  risk  your  lives  in  its  pursuit.  How  much  higher  game 
is  a  Thug's!  " 

That  must  really  be  the  secret  of  the  rise  and  de 
velopment  of  Thuggee.  The  joy  of  killing  !  the  joy 
of  seeing  killing  done  —  these  are  traits  of  the  human 
race  at  large.  We  white  people  are  merely  modified 
Thugs ;  Thugs  fretting  under  the  restraints  of  a  not 
very  thick  skin  of  civilization ;  Thugs  who  long  ago 
enjoyed  the  slaughter  of  the  Roman  arena,  and  later 
the  burning  of  doubtful  Christians  by  authentic 
Christians  in  the  public  squares,  and  who  now,  with 
the  Thugs  of  Spain  and  Nhnes,  flock  to  enjcy  the 
blood  and  misery  of  the  bull-ring.  We  have  no 
tourists  of  either  sex  or  any  religion  who  are  able  to 
resist  the  delights  of  the  bull-ring  when  opportunity 
offers ;  and  we  are  gentle  Thugs  in  the  hunting 
9**  (125) 


126  Following  the  Equator 

season,  and  love  to  chase  a  tame  rabbit  and  kill  it. 
Still,  we  have  made  some  progress  —  microscopic, 
and  in  truth  scarcely  worth  mentioning,  and  cer 
tainly  nothing  to  be  proud  of — still,  it  is  progress: 
we  no  longer  take  pleasure  in  slaughtering  or  burning 
helpless  men.  We  have  reached  a  little  altitude 
where  we  may  look  down  upon  the  Indian  Thugs 
with  a  complacent  shudder ;  and  we  may  even  hope 
for  a  day,  many  centuries  hence,  when  our  posterity 
will  look  down  upon  us  in  the  same  way. 

There  are  many  indications  that  the  Thug  often 
hunted  men  for  the  mere  sport  of  it ;  that  the  fright 
and  pain  of  the  quarry  were  no  more  to  him  than  are 
the  fright  and  pain  of  the  rabbit  or  the  stag  to  us ; 
and  that  he  was  no  more  ashamed  of  beguiling  his 
game  with  deceits  and  abusing  its  trust  than  are  we 
when  we  have  imitated  a  wild  animal's  call  and  shot 
it  when  it  honored  us  with  its  confidence  and  came 
to  see  what  we  wanted : 

"  Madara,  son  of  Nihal,  and  I,  Ramzam,  set  out  from  Kotdee  in 
the  cold  weather,  and  followed  the  high  road  for  about  twenty  days  in 
search  of  travelers  until  we  came  to  Selempore,  where  we  met  a  very 
old  man  going  to  the  east.  We  won  his  confidence  in  this  manner:  He 
carried  a  load  which  was  too  heavy  for  his  old  age  ;  I  said  to  him : 
'  You  are  an  old  man,  I  will  aid  you  in  carrying  your  load,  as  you  are 
from  my  part  of  the  country.'  He  said:  'Very  well,  take  me  with 
you.'  So  we  took  him  with  us  to  Selempore,  where  we  slept  that 
night.  We  woke  him  next  morning  before  dawn  and  set  out,  and  at 
the  distance  of  three  miles  we  seated  him  to  rest  while  it  was  still  very 
dark.  Madara  was  ready  behind  him,  and  strangled  him.  He  never 
spoke  a  word.  He  was  about  60  or  70  years  of  age." 

Another  gang  fell  in  with  a  couple  of  barbers  and 


Following  the  Equator  127 

persuaded  them  to  come  along  in  their  company  by 
promising  them  the  job  of  shaving  the  whole  crew 
—  30  Thugs.  At  the  place  appointed  for  the  murder 
I  5  got  shaved,  and  actually  paid  the  barbers  for  their 
work.  Then  killed  them  and  took  back  the  money. 

A  gang  of  forty-two  Thugs  came  across  two 
Brahmins  and  a  shopkeeper  on  the  road,  beguiled 
them  into  a  grove  and  got  up  a  concert  for  their  en 
tertainment.  While  these  poor  fellows  were  listen 
ing  to  the  music  the  stranglers  were  standing  behind 
them ;  and  at  the  proper  moment  for  dramatic  effect 
they  applied  the  noose. 

The  most  devoted  fisherman  must  have  a  bite  at 
least  as  often  as  once  a  week  or  his  passion  will  cool 
and  he  will  put  up  his  tackle.  The  tiger-sportsman 
must  find  a  tiger  at  least  once  a  fortnight  or  he  will 
get  tired  and  quit.  The  elephant-hunter's  enthusiasm 
will  waste  away  little  by  little,  and  his  zeal  will  perish 
at  last  if  he  plod  around  a  month  without  finding  a 
member  of  that  noble  family  to  assassinate. 

But  when  the  lust  in  the  hunter's  heart  is  for  the 
noblest  of  all  quarries,  man,  how  different  is  the 
case  !  and  how  watery  and  poor  is  the  zeal  and  how 
childish  the  endurance  of  those  other  hunters  by 
'comparison.  Then,  neither  hunger,  nor  thirst,  nor 
fatigue,  nor  deferred  hope,  nor  monotonous  disap 
pointment,  nor  leaden-footed  lapse  of  time  can  con 
quer  the  hunter's  patience  or  weaken  the  joy  of  his 
quest  or  cool  the  splendid  rage  of  his  desire.  Of 
all  the  hunting-passions  that  burn  in  the  breast  of 


128  Following  the  Equator 

man,  there  is  none  that  can  lift  him  superior  to  dis 
couragements  like  these  but  the  one  —  the  royal 
sport,  the  supreme  sport,  whose  quarry  is  his 
brother.  By  comparison,  tiger-hunting  is  a  color 
less  poor  thing,  for  all  it  has  been  so  bragged  about. 
Why,  the  Thug  was  content  to  tramp  patiently 
along,  afoot,  in  the  wasting  heat  of  India,  week 
after  week,  at  an  average  of  nine  or  ten  miles  a  day, 
if  he  might  but  hope  to  find  game  some  time  or 
other  and  refresh  his  longing  soul  with  blood.  Here 
is  an  instance : 

"I  (Ramzam)  and  Hyder  set  out,  for  the  purpose  of  strangling 
travelers,  from  Guddapore,  and  proceeded  via  the  Fort  of  Julalabad, 
Newulgunge,  Bangermow,  on  the  banks  of  the  Ganges  (upwards  of  100 
miles),  from  whence  we  returned  by  another  route.  Still  no  travelers  ! 
till  we  reached  Bowaneegunge,  where  we  fell  in  with  a  traveler,  a  boat 
man;  we  inveigled  him,  and  about  two  miles  east  of  there  Hyder 
strangled  him  as  he  stood  —  for  he  was  troubled  and  afraid  and  would 
not  sit.  We  then  made  a  long  journey  (about  130  miles)  and  reached 
Hussunpore  Bundwa,  where  at  the  tank  we  fell  in  with  a  traveler — 
he  slept  there  that  night;  next  morning  we  followed  him  and  tried  to 
win  his  confidence;  at  the  distance  of  two  miles  we  endeavored  to  induce 
him  to  sit  down  —  but  he  would  not,  having  become  aware  of  us.  I 
attempted  to  strangle  him  as  he  walked  along,  but  did  not  succeed;  both 
of  us  then  fell  upon  him.  He  made  a  great  outcry,  '  They  are  murdering 
me!'  At  length  we  strangled  him  and  flung  his  body  into  a  well. 
After  this  we  returned  to  our  homes,  having  been  out  a  month  and 
traveled  about  260  miles.  A  total  of  two  men  murdered  on  the  ex 
pedition." 

And  here  is  another  case  —  related  by  the  terrible 
Futty  Khan,  a  man  with  a  tremendous  record,  to 
be  re-mentioned  by  and  by : 

"  I,  with  thiee  others,  traveled  for  about  45  days  a  distance  of  about 
2OO  miles  in  search  of  victims  along  the  highway  to  Bundwa  and  re- 


Following  the  Equator  129 

turned  by  Davodpore  (another  200  miles)  during  which  journey  we  had 
only  one  murder,  which  happened  in  this  manner.  Four  miles  to  the 
east  of  Noubustaghat  we  fell  in  with  a  traveler,  an  old  man.  I,  with 
Roshal  and  Hyder,  inveigled  him  and  accompanied  him  that  day  within 
three  miles  of  Rampoor,  where,  after  dark,  in  a  lonely  place,  we  got 
him  to  sit  down  and  rest;  and  while  I  kept  him  in  talk,  seated  before 
him,  Hyder  behind  strangled  him:  he  made  no  resistance.  Koshal 
stabbed  him  under  the  arms  and  in  the  throat,  and  we  flung  the  body 
into  a  running  stream.  We  got  about  four  or  five  rupees  each  ($2  or 
$2.50).  We  then  proceeded  homewards.  A  total  of  one  man  mur 
dered  on  this  expedition." 

There.  They  tramped  400  miles,  were  gone 
about  three  months,  and  harvested  two  dollars  and  a 
half  apiece.  But  the  mere  pleasure  of  the  hunt  was 
sufficient.  That  was  pay  enough.  They  did  no 
grumbling. 

Every  now  and  then  in  this  big  book  one  comes 
across  that  pathetic  remark:  "  We  tried  to  get  him 
to  sit  down  but  he  would  not."  It  tells  the  whole 
story.  Some  accident  had  awakened  the  suspicion 
in  him  that  these  smooth  friends  who  had  been 
petting  and  coddling  him  and  making  him  feel  so 
safe  and  so  fortunate  after  his  forlorn  and  lonely 
wanderings  were  the  dreaded  Thugs ;  and  now  their 
ghastly  invitation  to  "  sit  and  rest"  had  confirmed 
its  truth.  He  knew  there  was  no  help  for  him,  and 
that  he  was  looking  his  last  upon  earthly  things,  but 
"he  would  not  sit."  No,  not  that — it  was  too 
awful  to  think  of ! 

There  are  a  number  of  instances  which  indicate 
that  when  a  man  had  once  tasted  the  regal  joys  of 
man-hunting  he  could  not  be  content  with  the  dull 
9*. 


130  Following  the  Equator 

monotony  of  a  crimeless  life  afterward.     Example, 
from  a  Thug's  testimony: 

"  We  passed  through  to  Kurnaul,  where  we  found  a  former  Thug 
named  Junooa,  an  old  comrade  of  ours,  who  had  turned  religious 
mendicant  and  become  a  disciple  and  holy.  He  came  to  us  in  the  serai 
and  weeping  with  joy  returned  to  his  old  trade." 

Neither  wealth  nor  honors  nor  dignities  could 
satisfy  a  reformed  Thug  for  long.  He  would  throw 
them  all  away,  some  day,  and  go  back  to  the  lurid 
pleasures  of  hunting  men,  and  being  hunted  himself 
by  the  British. 

Ramzam  was  taken  into  a  great  native  grandee's 
service  and  given  authority  over  five  villages.  <:  My 
authority  extended  over  these  people  to  summons 
them  to  my  presence>  to  make  them  stand  or  sit.  I 
dressed  well,  rode  my  pony,  and  had  two  sepoys,  a 
scribe  and  a  village  guard  to  attend  me.  During 
three  years  I  used  to  pay  each  village  a  monthly 
visit,  and  no  one  suspected  that  I  was  a  Thug!  The 
chief  man  used  to  wait  on  me  to  transact  business, 
and,  as  I  passed  along,  old  and  young  made  their 
salaam  to  me." 

And  yet  during  that  very  three  years  he  got  leave 
of  absence  "to  attend  a  wedding,"  and  instead 
went  off  on  a  Thugging  lark  with  six  other  Thugs 
and  hunted  the  highway  for  fifteen  days! — with 
satisfactory  results. 

Afterwards  he  held  a  great  office  under  a  Rajah. 
There  he  had  ten  miles  of  country  under  his  com 
mand  and  a  military  guard  of  fifteen  men,  with 


Following  the  Equator  131 

authority  to  call  out  2,000  more  upon  occasion. 
But  the  British  got  on  his  track,  and  they  crowded 
him  so  that  he  had  to  give  himself  up.  See  what  a 
figure  he  was  when  he  was  gotten  up  for  style  and 
had  all  his  things  on:  "I  was  fully  armed  —  a 
sword,  shield,  pistols,  a  matchlock  musket  and  a  flint 
gun,  for  I  was  fond  of  being  thus  arrayed,  and  when 
so  armed  feared  not  though  forty  men  stood  before 
me." 

He  gave  himself  up  and  proudly  proclaimed  him 
self  a  Thug.  Then  by  request  he  agreed  to  betray 
his  friend  and  pal,  Buhram,  a  Thug  with  the  most 
tremendous  record  in  India.  "  I  went  to  the  house 
where  Buhram  slept  (often  has  he  led  our  gangs!). 
I  woke  him,  he  knew  me  well,  and  came  outside  to 
me.  It  was  a  cold  night,  so,  under  pretense  of 
warming  myself,  "out  in  reality  to  have  light  for  his 
seizure  by  the  guards,  I  lighted  some  straw  and 
made  a  blaze.  We  were  warming  our  hands.  The 
guards  drew  around  us.  I  said  to  them,  *  This  is 
Buhram,'  and  he  was  seized  just  as  a  cat  seizes  a 
mouse.  Then  Buhram  said,  'lam  a  Thug!  my 
father  was  a  Thug,  my  grandfather  was  a  Thug,  and 
I  have  thugged  with  many  !  " 

So  spoke  the  mighty  hunter,  the  mightiest  of  the 
mighty,  the  Gordon  Gumming  of  his  day.  Not 
much  regret  noticeable  in  it.  * 


*  "  Having  planted  a  bullet  in  the  shoulder-bone  of  an  elephant,  and 
caused  the  agonized  creature  to  lean  for  support  against  a  tree,  I  pro- 
seeded  to  brew  some  coffee.  Having  refreshed  myself,  taking  observa- 


c  ^ 


132  Following  the  Equator 

So  many,  many  times  this  Official  Report  leaves 
one's  curiosity  unsatisfied.  For  instance,  here  is  a 
little  paragraph  out  of  the  record  of  a  certain  band 
of  193  Thugs,  which  has  that  defect: 

"  Fell  in  with  Lall  Sing  Subahdar  and  his  family,  consisting  of  nine 
persons.  Traveled  with  them  two  days,  and  the  third  put  them  all  to 
death  except  the  two  children,  little  boys  of  one  and  a  half  years  old." 

There  it  stops.  What  did  they  ao  with  those  poor 
little  fellows?  What  was  their  subsequent  history? 
Did  they  purpose  training  them  up  as  Thugs?  How 
could  they  take  care  of  such  little  creatures  on  a 
march  which  stretched  over  several  months?  No  one 
seems  to  have  cared  to  ask  any  questions  about  the 
babies.  But  I  do  wish  I  knew. 

One  would  be  apt  to  imagine  that  the  Thugs  were 
utterly  callous,  utterly  destitute  of  human  feelings, 
heartless  toward  their  own  families  as  well  as  toward 
other  people's;  but  this  was  not  so.  Like  all  other 

tions  of  the  elephant's  spasms  and  writhings  between  the  sips,  I 
resolved  to  make  experiments  on  vulnerable  points,  and,  approaching 
very  near,  I  fired  several  bullets  at  different  parts  of  his  enormous  skull. 
He  only  acknowledged  the  shots  by  a  salaam-like  movement  of  his 
trunk,  with  the  point  of  which  he  gently  touched  the  wounds  with  a 
striking  and  peculiar  action.  Surprised  and  shocked  to  find  that  I  was 
only  prolonging  the  suffering  of  the  noble  beast,  which  bore  its  trials 
with  such  dignified  composure,  I  resolved  to  finish  the  proceeding  with 
all  possible  despatch,  and  accordingly  opened  fire  upon  him  from  the  left 
side.  Aiming  at  the  shoulder,  I  fired  six  shots  with  the  two-grooved 
rifle,  which  must  have  eventually  proved  mortal,  after  which  I  fired  six 
shots  at  the  same  part  with  the  Dutch  six-pounder.  Large  tears  now 
trickled  down  from  his  eyes,  which  he  slowly  shut  and  opened,  his 
colossal  frame  shivered  convulsively,  and  falling  on  his  side  he  expired." 
—  Gordon  Camming. 


Following  the  Equator  133 

Indians,  they  had  a  passionate  love  for  their  kin.  A 
shrewd  British  officer  who  knew  the  Indian  character, 
took  that  characteristic  into  account  in  laying  his 
plans  for  the  capture  of  Eugene  Sue's  famous  Fer- 
inghea.  He  found  out  Feringhea's  hiding-place,  and 
sent  a  guard  by  night  to  seize  him,  but  the  squad 
was  awkward  and  he  got  away.  However,  they  got 
the  rest  of  the  family  —  the  mother,  wife,  child,  and 
brother  —  and  brought  them  to  the  officer,  at  Jub- 
bulpore;  the  officer  did  not  fret,  but  bided  his  time: 
11  I  knew  Feringhea  would  not  go  far  while  links  so 
dear  to  him  were  in  my  hands."  He  was  right. 
Feringhea  knew  all  the  danger  he  was  running  by 
staying  in  the  neighborhood,  still  he  could  not  tear 
himself  away.  The  officer  found  that  he  divided  his 
time  between  five  villages  where  he  had  relatives  and 
friends  who  could  get  news  for  him  from  his  family 
in  Jubbulpore  jail ;  and  that  he  never  slept  two  con 
secutive  nights  in  the  same  village.  The  officer 
traced  out  his  several  haunts,  then  pounced  upon  all 
the  five  villages  on  the  one  night  and  at  the  same 
hour,  and  got  his  man. 

Another  example  of  family  affection.  A  little 
while  previously  to  the  capture  of  Feringhea's  family, 
the  British  officer  had  captured  Feringhea's  foster- 
brother,  leader  of  a  gang  of  ten,  and  had  tried  the 
eleven  and  condemned  them  to  be  hanged.  Ferin 
ghea's  captured  family  arrived  at  the  jail  the  day  be 
fore  the  execution  was  to  take  place.  The  foster- 
brother,  Jhurhoo,  entreated  to  be  allowed  to  see  the 


134  Following  the  Equator 

aged  mother  and  the  others.  The  prayer  was 
granted,  and  this  is  what  took  place  —  it  is  the 
British  officer  who  speaks : 

"  In  the  morning,  just  before  going  to  the  scaffold,  the  interview 
took  place  before  me.  He  fell  at  the  old  woman's  feet  and  begged  that 
she  would  relieve  him  from  the  obligations  of  the  milk  with  which  she 
had  nourished  him  from  infancy,  as  he  was  about  to  die  before  he  could 
fulfill  any  of  them.  She  placed  her  hands  on  his  head,  and  he  knelt, 
and  she  said  she  forgave  him  all,  and  l.M  him  die  like  a  man." 

If  a  capable  artist  should  make  a  picture  of  it,  it 
would  be  full  of  dignity  and  solemnity  and  pathos ; 
and  it  could  touch  you.  You  would  imagine  it  to 
be  anything  but  what  it  was.  There  is  reverence 
there,  and  tenderness,  and  gratefulness,  and  compas 
sion,  and  resignation,  and  fortitude,  and  self-respect 
—  and  no  sense  of  disgrace,  no  thought  of  dishonor. 
Everything  is  there  that  goes  to  make  a  noble  part 
ing,  and  give  it  a  moving  grace  and  beauty  and 
dignity.  And  yet  one  of  these  people  is  a  Thug  and 
the  other  a  mother  of  Thugs  !  The  incongruities  of 
our  human  nature  seem  to  reach  their  limit  here. 

I  wish  to  make  note  of  one  curious  thing  while  I 
think  of  it.  One  of  the  very  commonest  remarks  to 
be  found  in  this  bewildering  array  of  Thug  confes 
sions  is  this : 

"  Strangled  him  and  threw  him  in  a  well!"  In 
one  case  they  threw  sixteen  into  a  well  —  and  they 
had  thrown  others  in  the  same  well  before.  It  makes 
a  body  thirsty  to  read  about  it. 

And  there  is  another  very  curious  thing.  The  bands 
of  Thugs  had  private  graveyards.  They  did  not  like 


Following  the  Equator  135 

to  kill  and  bury  at  random,  here  and  there  and  every 
where.  They  preferred  to  wait,  and  toll  the  victims 
along,  and  get  to  one  of  their  regular  burying-places 
(bheels)  if  they  could.  In  the  little  kingdom  of 
Oude,  which  was  about  half  as  big  as  Ireland  and 
about  as  big  as  the  State  of  Maine,  they  had  two 
hundred  and  seventy-four  bheels.  They  were  scattered 
along  fourteen  hundred  miles  of  road,  at  an  average 
of  only  five  miles  apart,  and  the  British  government 
traced  out  and  located  each  and  every  one  of  them 
and  set  them  down  on  the  map. 

The  Oude  bands  seldom  went  out  of  their  own 
country,  but  they  did  a  thriving  business  within  its 
borders.  So  did  outside  bands  who  came  in  and 
helped.  Some  of  the  Thug  leaders  of  Oude  were 
noted  for  their  successful  careers.  Each  of  four  of 
them  confessed  to  above  300  murders;  another  to 
nearly  400  ;  our  friend  Ramzam  to  604  —  he  is  the 
one  who  got  leave  of  absence  to  attend  a  wedding 
and  went  thugging  instead ;  and  he  is  also  the  one 
who  betrayed  Buhram  to  the  British. 

But  the  biggest  records  of  all  were  the  murder-lists 
of  Futty  Khan  and  Buhram.  Futty  Khan's  number 
is  smaller  than  Ramzam's,  but  he  is  placed  at  the 
head  because  his  average  is  the  best  in  Oude-Thug 
history  per  year  of  service.  His  slaughter  was  508 
men  in  twenty  years,  and  he  was  still  a  young  man 
when  the  British  stopped  his  industry.  Buhram's 
list  was  93 1  murders,  but  it  took  him  forty  years. 
His  average  was  one  man  and  nearly  all  of  another 


136  Following  the  Equator 

man  per  month  for  forty  years,  but  Futty  Khan's 
average  was  two  men  and  a  little  of  another  man 
per  month  during  his  twenty  years  of  usefulness. 

There  is  one  very  striking  thing  which  I  wish  to 
call  attention  to.  You  have  surmised  from  the  listed 
callings  followed  by  the  victims  of  the  Thugs  that 
nobody  could  travel  the  Indian  roads  unprotected 
and  live  to  get  through ;  that  the  Thugs  respected 
no  quality,  no  vocation,  no  religion,  nobody;  that 
they  killed  every  unarmed  man  that  came  in  their 
way.  That  is  wholly  true  —  with  one  reservation. 
In  all  the  long  file  of  Thug  confessions  an  English 
traveler  is  mentioned  but  once  —  and  this  is  what  the 
Thug  says  of  the  circumstance: 

"He  was  on  his  way  from  Mhow  to  Bombay.  We  studiously 
avoided  him.  He  proceeded  next  morning  with  a  number  of  travelers 
•who  had  soitght  his  protection,  and  they  took  the  road  to  Baroda." 

We  do  not  know  who  he  was ;  he  flits  across  the 
page  of  this  rusty  old  book  and  disappears  in  the 
obscurity  beyond ;  but  he  is  an  impressive  figure, 
moving  through  that  valley  of  death  serene  and  un 
afraid,  clothed  in  the  might  of  the  English  name. 

We  have  now  followed  the  big  official  book  through, 
and  we  understand  what  Thuggee  was,  what  a  bloody 
terror  it  was,  what  a  desolating  scourge  it  was.  In 
1830  the  English  found  this  cancerous  organization 
imbedded  in  the  vitals  of  the  empire,  doing  its  de 
vastating  work  in  secrecy,  and  assisted,  protected, 
sheltered,  and  hidden  by  innumerable  confederates 
—  big  and  little  native  chiefs,  customs  officers,  village 


Following  the  Equator  137 

officials,  and  native  police,  all  ready  to  lie  for  it,  and 
the  mass  of  the  people,  through  fear,  persistently 
pretending  to  know  nothing  about  its  doings ;  and 
this  condition  of  things  had  existed  for  generations, 
and  was  formidable  with  the  sanctions  of  age  and  old 
custom.  If  ever  there  was  an  unpromising  task,  if 
ever  there  was  a  hopeless  task  in  the  world,  surely  it 
was  offered  here  —  the  task  of  conquering  Thuggee. 
But  that  little  handful  of  English  officials  in  India 
set  their  sturdy  and  confident  grip  upon  it,  and 
ripped  it  out,  root  and  branch  !  How  modest  do 
Captain  Vallancey's  words  sound  now,  when  we  read 
them  again,  knowing  what  we  know: 

"  The  day  that  sees  this  far-spread  evil  completely  eradicated  from 
India,  and  known  only  in  name,  will  greatly  tend  to  immortalize  British 
rule  in  the  East." 

It  would  be  hard  to  word  a  claim  more  modestly 
than  that  for  this  most  noble  work. 


CHAPTER    XII. 

Grief  can  take  care  of  itself;  but  to  get  the  full  value  of  a  joy  you  must  have 
somebody  to  divide  it  with.  — PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WE  left  Bombay  for  Allahabad  by  a  night  train. 
It  is  the  custom  of  the  country  to  avoid  day 
travel  when  it  can  conveniently  be  done.  But  there 
is  one  trouble  :  while  you  can  seemingly  ' '  secure  ' '  the 
two  lower  berths  by  making  early  application,  there  is 
no  ticket  as  witness  of  it,  and  no  other  producible 
evidence  in  case  your  proprietorship  shall  chance  to 
be  challenged.  The  word  "engaged"  appears  on 
the  window,  but  it  doesn't  state  who  the  compart 
ment  is  engaged  for.  If  your  Satan  and  your  Barney 
arrive  before  somebody  else's  servants,  and  spread 
the  bedding  on  the  two  sofas  and  then  sltand  guard 
till  you  come,  all  will  be  well;  but  if  they  step  aside 
on  an  errand,  they  may  find  the  beds  promoted  to 
the  two  shelves,  and  somebody  else's  demons  stand 
ing  guard  over  their  master's  beds,  which  in  the 
meantime  have  been  spread  upon  your  sofas. 

You  do  not  pay  anything  extra  for  your  sleeping 
place;  that  is  where  the  trouble  lies.  If  you  buy  a 
fare-ticket  and  fail  to  use  it,  there  is  room  thus 

(138) 


Following  the  Equator  139 

made  available  for  some  one  else ;  but  if  the  place 
were  secured  to  you  it  would  remain  vacant,  and  yet 
your  ticket  would  secure  you  another  place  when  you 
were  presently  ready  for  travel. 

However,  no  explanation  of  such  a  system  can 
make  it  seem  quite  rational  to  a  person  who  has  been 
used  to  a  more  rational  system.  If  our  people  had 
the  arranging  of  it,  we  should  charge  extra  for  se 
curing  the  place,  and  then  the  road  would  suffer  no 
loss  if  the  purchaser  did  not  occupy  it. 

The  present  system  encourages  good  manners  — 
and  also  discourages  them.  If  a  young  girl  has  a 
lower  berth  and  an  elderly  lady  comes  in,  it  is  usual 
for  the  girl  to  offer  her  place  to  this  late  comer ;  and 
it  is  usual  for  the  late  comer  to  thank  her  courteously 
and  take  it.  But  the  thing  happens  differently  some 
times.  When  we  were  ready  to  leave  Bombay  my 
daughter's  satchels  were  holding  possession  of  her 
berth  —  a  lower  one.  At  the  last  moment,  a 
middle-aged  American  lady  swarmed  into  the  com 
partment,  followed  by  native  porters  laden  with  her 
baggage.  She  was  growling  and  snarling  and  scold 
ing,  and  trying  to  make  herself  phenomenally  dis 
agreeable ;  and  succeeding.  Without  a  word,  she 
hoisted  the  satchels  into  the  hanging  shelf,  and  took 
possession  of  that  lower  berth. 

On  one  of  our  trips  Mr.  Smythe  and  I  got  out  at 
a  station  to  walk  up  and  down,  and  when  we  came 
back  Smythe's  bed  was  in  the  hanging  shelf  and  an 
English  cavalry  officer  was  in  bed  on  the  sofa  which 


140  Following  the  Equator 

he  had  lately  been  occupying.  It  was  mean  to  be 
glad  about  it,  but  it  is  the  way  we  are  made;  I 
could  not  have  been  gladder  if  it  had  been  my  enemy 
that  had  suffered  this  misfortune.  We  all  like  to  see 
people  in  trouble,  if  it  doesn't  cost  us  anything.  I 
was  so  happy  over  Mr.  Smythe's  chagrin  that  I 
couldn't  go  to  sleep  for  thinking  of  it  and  enjoying  it. 
I  knew  he  supposed  the  officer  had  committed  the 
robbery  himself,  whereas  without  a  doubt  the 
officer's  servant  had  done  it  without  his  knowledge. 
Mr.  Smythe  kept  this  incident  warm  in  his  heart, 
and  longed  for  a  chance  to  get  even  with  somebody 
for  it.  Sometime  afterward  the  opportunity  came,  in 
Calcutta.  We  were  leaving  on  a  24-hour  journey  to 
Darjeeling.  Mr.  Barclay,  the  general  superintend 
ent,  has  made  special  provision  for  our  accommoda 
tion,  Mr.  Smythe  said;  so  there  was  no  need  to 
hurry  about  getting  to  the  train;  consequently,  we 
were  a  little  late.  When  we  arrived,  the  usual  im 
mense  turmoil  and  confusion  of  a  great  Indian  station 
were  in  full  blast.  It  was  an  immoderately  long 
train,  for  all  the  natives  of  India  were  going  by  it 
somewhither,  and  the  native  officials  were  being 
pestered  to  frenzy  by  belated  and  anxious  people. 
They  didn't  know  where  our  car  was,  and  couldn't 
remember  having  received  any  orders  about  it.  It 
was  a  deep  disappointment;  moreover,  it  looked  as 
if  our  half  of  our  party  would  be  left  behind  alto 
gether.  Then  Satan  came  running  and  said  he  had 
found  a  compartment  with  one  shelf  and  one  sofa 


Following  the  Equator  141 

unoccupied,  and  had  made  our  beds  and  had  stowed 
our  baggage.  We  rushed  to  the  place,  and  just  as 
the  train  was  ready  to  pull  out  and  the  porters  were 
slamming  the  doors  to,  all  down  the  line,  an  officer 
of  the  Indian  Civil  Service,  a  good  friend  of  ours, 
put  his  head  in  and  said : 

"  I  have  been  hunting  for  you  everywhere.  What 
are  you  doing  here?  Don't  you  know — " 

The  train  started  before  he  could  finish.  Mr. 
Smythe's  opportunity  was  come.  His  bedding,  on 
the  shelf,  at  once  changed  places  with  the  bedding 
—  a  stranger's  —  that  was  occupying  the  sofa  that 
was  opposite  to  mine.  About  ten  o'clock  we 
stopped  somewhere,  and  a  large  Englishman  of 
official  military  bearing  stepped  in.  We  pretended 
to  be  asleep.  The  lamps  were  covered,  but  there  was 
light  enough  for  us  to  note  his  look  of  surprise. 
He  stood  there,  grand  and  fine,  peering  down  at 
Smythe,  and  wondering  in  silence  at  the  situation. 
After  a  bit  he  said : 

"Well!  "     And  that  was  all. 

But  that  was  enough.  It  was  easy  to  understand. 
It  meant:  "This  is  extraordinary.  This  is  high 
handed.  I  haven't  had  an  experience  like  this 
before." 

He  sat  down  on  his  baggage,  and  for  twenty 
minutes  we  watched  him  through  our  eyelashes, 
rocking  and  swaying  there  to  the  motion  of  the 
train.  Then  we  came  to  a  station,  and  he  got  up 
and  went  out,  muttering:  "I  must  find  a  lower 

Tft** 


142  Following  the  Equator 

berth,  or  wait  over."  His  servant  came  presently 
and  carried  away  his  things. 

Mr.  Smythe's  sore  place  was  healed,  his  hunger 
for  revenge  was  satisfied.  But  he  couldn't  sleep, 
and  neither  could  I ;  for  this  was  a  venerable  old 
car,  and  nothing  about  it  was  taut.  The  closet  door 
slammed  all  night,  and  defied  every  fastening  we 
could  invent.  We  got  up  very  much  jaded,  at 
dawn,  and  stepped  out  at  a  way  station;  and,  while 
we  were  taking  a  cup  of  coffee,  that  Englishman 
ranged  up  alongside,  and  somebody  said  to  him: 

"  So  you  didn't  stop  off,  after  all?" 

"  No.  The  guard  found  a  place  for  me  that  had 
been  engaged  and  not  occupied.  I  had  a  whole 
saloon  car  all  to  myself  —  oh,  quite  palatial!  I 
never  had  such  luck  in  my  life." 

That  was  our  car,  you  see.  We  moved  into  it, 
straight  off,  the  family  and  all.  But  I  asked  the 
English  gentleman  to  remain,  and  he  did.  A  pleas 
ant  man,  an  infantry  colonel;  and  doesn't  know, 
yet,  that  Smythe  robbed  him  of  his  berth,  but  thinks 
it  was  done  by  Smythe's  servant  without  Smythe's 
knowledge.  He  was  assisted  in  gathering  this  im 
pression. 

The  Indian  trains  are  manned  by  natives  exclu^- 
sively.  The  Indian  stations  —  except  very  large  and 
important  ones  —  are  manned  entirely  by  natives, 
and  so  are  the  posts  and  telegraphs.  The  rank  and 
file  of  the  police  are  natives.  All  these  people  are 
pleasant  and  accommodating.  One  day  I  left  an 


Following  the  Equator  143 

express  train  to  lounge  about  in  that  perennially 
ravishing  show,  the  ebb  and  flow  and  whirl  of  gaudy 
natives,  that  is  always  surging  up  and  down  the 
spacious  platform  of  a  great  Indian  station ;  and  I 
lost  myself  in  the  ecstasy  of  it,  and  when  I  turned, 
the  train  was  moving  swiftly  away.  I  was  going  to 
sit  down  and  wait  for  another  train,  as  I  would  have 
done  at  home;  I  had  no  thought  of  any  other 
course.  But  a  native  official,  who  had  a  green  flag 
in  his  hand,  saw  me,  and  said  politely: 

"  Don't  you  belong  in  the  train,  sir?" 

"Yes,"  I  said. 

He  waved  his  flag,  and  the  train  came  back ! 
And  he  put  me  aboard  with  as  much  ceremony  as  if 
I  had  been  the  General  Superintendent.  They  are 
kindly  people,  the  natives.  The  face  and  the  bear 
ing  that  indicate  a  surly  spirit  and  a  bad  heart 
seemed  to  me  to  be  so  rare  among  Indians  —  so 
nearly  non-existent,  in  fact  —  that  I  sometimes  won 
dered  if  Thuggee  wasn't  a  dream,  and  not  a  reality. 
The  bad  hearts  are  there,  but  I  believe  that  they  are 
in  a  small,  poor  minority.  One  thing  is  sure:  They 
are  much  the  most  interesting  people  in  the  world  — 
and  the  nearest  to  being  incomprehensible.  At  any 
rate,  the  hardest  to  account  for.  Their  character 
and  their  history,  their  customs  and  their  religion, 
confront  you  with  riddles  at  every  turn  —  riddles 
which  are  a  trifle  more  perplexing  after  they  are 
explained  than  they  were  before.  You  can  get  the 
facts  of  a  custom  —  like  caste,  and  Suttee,  and 


144  Following  the  Equator 

Thuggee,  and  so  on  —  and  with  the  facts  a  theory 
which  tries  to  explain,  but  never  quite  does  it  to 
your  satisfaction.  You  can  never  quite  understand 
how  so  strange  a  thing  could  have  been  born,  nor 
why. 

For  instance  —  the  Suttee.  This  is  the  explana 
tion  of  it :  A  woman  who  throws  away  her  life  when 
her  husband  dies  is  instantly  joined  to  him  again, 
and  is  forever  afterward  happy  with  him  in  heaven ; 
her  family  will  build  a  little  monument  to  her,  or  a 
temple,  and  will  hold  her  in  honor,  and,  indeed, 
worship  her  memory  always ;  they  will  themselves 
be  held  in  honor  by  the  public ;  the  woman's  self- 
sacrifice  has  conferred  a  noble  and  lasting  distinction 
upon  her  posterity.  And,  besides,  see  what  she  has 
escaped :  If  she  had  elected  to  live,  she  would  be  a 
disgraced  person ;  she  could  not  remarry ;  her 
family  would  despise  her  and  disown  her;  she  would 
be  a  friendless  outcast,  and  miserable  all  her  days. 

Very  well,  you  say,  but  the  explanation  is  not 
complete  yet.  How  did  people  come  to  drift  into 
such  a  strange  custom?  What  was  the  origin  of  the 
idea?  "Well,  nobody  knows;  it  was  probably  a 
revelation  sent  down  by  the  gods."  One  more 
thing:  Why  was  such  a  cruel  death  chosen  —  why 
wouldn't  a  gentle  one  have  answered?  "Nobody 
knows;  maybe  that  was  a  revelation,  too." 

No  —  you  can  never  understand  it.  It  all  seems 
impossible.  You  resolve  to  believe  that  a  widow 
never  burnt  herself  willingly,  but  went  to  her  death 


Following  the  Equator 

because  she  was  afraid  to  defy  public  opinion.  But 
you  are  not  able  to  keep  that  position.  History 
drives  you  from  it.  Major  Sleeman  has  a  convinc 
ing  case  in  one  of  his  books.  In  his  government  on 
the  Nerbudda  he  made  a  brave  attempt  on  the  28th 
of  March,  1828,  to  put  down  Suttee  on  his  own 
hook  and  without  warrant  from  the  Supreme  Govern 
ment  of  India.  He  could  not  foresee  that  the  Gov 
ernment  would  put  it  down  itself  eight  months  later. 
The  only  backing  he  had  was  a  bold  nature  and  a 
compassionate  heart.  He  issued  his  proclamation 
abolishing  the  Suttee  in  his  district.  On  the  morn 
ing  of  Tuesday — note  the  day  of  the  week  —  the 
24th  of  the  following  November,  Ummed  Singh 
Upadhya,  head  of  the  most  respectable  and  most 
extensive  Brahmin  family  in  the  district,  died,  and 
presently  came  a  deputation  of  his  sons  and  grand 
sons  to  beg  that  his  old  widow  might  be  allowed  to 
burn  herself  upon  his  pyre.  Sleeman  threatened  to 
enforce  his  order,  and  punish  severely  any  man  who 
assisted ;  and  he  placed  a  police  guard  to  see  that 
no  one  did  so.  From  the  early  morning  the  old 
widow  of  sixty-five  had  been  sitting  on  the  bank  of 
the  sacred  river  by  her  dead,  waiting  through  the 
long  hours  for  the  permission ;  and  at  last  the  re 
fusal  came  instead.  In  one  little  sentence  Sleeman 
gives  you  a  pathetic  picture  of  this  lonely  old  gray 
figure:  all  day  and  all  night  "  she  remained  sitting 
by  the  edge  of  the  water  without  eating  or  drink 
ing."  The  next  morning  the  body  of  the  husband 
10** 


146  Following  the  Equator 

was  burned  to  ashes  in  a  pit  eight  feet  square  and 
three  or  four  feet  deep,  in  the  view  of  several  thou 
sand  spectators.  Then  the  widow  waded  out  to  a 
bare  rock  in  the  river,  and  everybody  went  away  but 
her  sons  and  other  relations.  All  day  she  sat  there 
on  her  rock  in  the  blazing  sun  without  food  or  drink, 
and  with  no  clothing  but  a  sheet  over  her  shoulders. 

The  relatives  remained  with  her,  and  all  tried  to 
persuade  her  to  desist  from  her  purpose,  for  they 
deeply  loved  her.  She  steadily  refused.  Then  a 
part  of  the  family  went  to  Sleeman's  house,  ten 
miles  away,  and  tried  again  to  get  him  to  let  her 
burn  herself.  He  refused,  hoping  to  save  her  yet. 

All  that  day  she  scorched  in  her  sheet  on  the 
rock,  and  all  that  night  she  kept  her  vigil  there  in 
the  bitter  cold.  Thursday  morning,  in  the  sight  of 
her  relatives,  she  went  through  a  ceremonial  which 
said  more  to  them  than  any  words  could  have  done ; 
she  put  on  the  dhaja  (a  coarse  red  turban)  and 
broke  her  bracelets  in  pieces.  By  these  acts  she 
became  a  dead  person  in  the  eye  of  the  law,  and 
excluded  from  her  caste  forever.  By  the  iron  rule 
of  ancient  custom,  if  she  should  now  choose  to  live 
she  could  never  return  to  her  family.  Sleeman  was 
in  deep  trouble.  If  she  starved  herself  to  death  her 
family  would  be  disgraced;  and,  moreover,  starving 
would  be  a  more  lingering  misery  than  the  death  by 
fire.  He  went  back  in  the  evening  thoroughly 
worried.  The  old  woman  remained  on  her  rock, 
and  there  in  the  morning  he  found  her  with  her 


Following  the  Equator  147 

dhaja  still  on  her  head.  "  She  talked  very  col 
lectedly,  telling  me  that  sne  had  determined  to  mix 
her  ashes  with  those  of  her  departed  husband,  and 
should  patiently  wait  my  permission  to  do  so, 
assured  that  God  would  enable  her  to  sustain  life  till 
that  was  given,  though  she  dared  not  eat  or  drink. 
Looking  at  the  sun,  then  rising  before  her  over  a 
long  and  beautiful  reach  of  the  river,  she  said 
calmly,  '  My  soul  has  been  for  five  days  with  my 
husband's  near  that  sun;  nothing  but  my  earthly 
frame  is  left;  and  this,  I  know,  you  will  in  time 
suffer  to  be  mixed  with  his  ashes  in  yonder  pit,  be 
cause  it  is  not  in  your  nature  or  usage  wantonly  to 
prolong  the  miseries  of  a  poor  old  woman.'  ' 

He  assured  her  that  it  was  his  desire  and  duty  to 
save  her,  and  to  urge  her  to  live,  and  to  keep  her 
family  from  the  disgrace  of  being  thought  her  mur 
derers.  But  she  said  she  was  not  afraid  of  their 
being  thought  so ;  that  they  had  all,  like  good  chil 
dren,  done  everything  in  their  power  to  induce  her 
to  live,  and  to  abide  with  them;  "and  if  I  should 
consent  I  know  they  would  love  and  honor  me,  but 
my  duties  to  them  have  now  ended.  I  commit  them 
all  to  your  care,  and  I  go  to  attend  my  husband, 
Ummed  Singh  Upadhya,  with  whose  ashes  on  the 
funeral  pile  mine  have  been  already  three  times 
mixed." 

She  believed  that  she  and  he  had  been  upon  the 
earth  three  several  times  as  wife  and  husband,  and 
that  she  had   burned   herself  to   death   three  times 
J*» 


148  Following  the  Equator 

upon  his  pyre.  That  is  why  she  said  that  strange 
thing.  Since  she  had  br&ken  her  bracelets  and  put 
on  the  red  turban  she  regarded  herself  as  a  corpse ; 
otherwise  she  would  not  have  allowed  herself  to  do 
her  husband  the  irreverence  of  pronouncing  his 
name.  "  This  was  the  first  time  in  her  long  life  that 
she  had  ever  uttered  her  husband's  name,  for  in 
India  no  woman,  high  or  low,  ever  pronounces  the 
name  of  her  husband." 

Major  Sleeman  still  tried  to  shake  her  purpose. 
He  promised  to  build  her  a  fine  house  among  the 
temples  of  her  ancestors  upon  the  bank  of  the  river 
and  make  handsome  provision  for  her  out  of  rent- 
free  lands  if  she  would  consent  to  live ;  and  if  she 
wouldn't  he  would  allow  no  stone  or  brick  to  ever 
mark  the  place  where  she  died.  But  she  only  smiled 
and  said,  "  My  pulse  has  long  ceased  to  beat,  my 
spirit  has  departed ;  I  shall  suffer  nothing  in  the 
burning;  and  if  you  wish  proof,  order  some  fire  and 
you  shall  see  this  arm  consumed  without  giving  me 
any  pain." 

Sleeman  was  now  satisfied  that  he  could  not  alter 
her  purpose.  He  sent  for  all  the  chief  members  of 
the  family  and  said  he  would  suffer  her  to  burn  her 
self  if  they  would  enter  into  a  written  engagement  to 
abandon  the  Suttee  in  their  family  thenceforth. 
They  agreed ;  the  papers  were  drawn  out  and 
signed,  and  at  noon,  Saturday,  word  was  sent  to  the 
poor  old  woman.  She  seemed  greatly  pleased. 
The  ceremonies  of  bathing  were  gone  through  with, 


Following  the  Equator  149 

and  by  three  o'clock  she  was  ready  and  the  fire  was 
briskly  burning  in  the  pit.  She  had  now  gone  with 
out  food  or  drink  during  more  than  four  days  and  a 
half.  She  came  ashore  from  her  rock,  first  wetting 
her  sheet  in  the  waters  of  the  sacred  river,  for  with 
out  that  safeguard  any  shadow  which  might  fall 
upon  her  would  convey  impurity  to  her;  then  she 
walked  to  the  pit,  leaning  upon  one  of  her  sons  and 
a  nephew  —  the  distance  was  a  hundred  and  fifty 
yards. 

"  I  had  sentries  placed  all  around,  and  no  other  person  was  allowed 
to  approach  within  five  paces.  She  came  on  with  a  calm  and  cheerful 
countenance,  stopped  once,  and,  casting  her  eyes  upwards,  said :  *  Why 
have  they  kept  me  five  days  from  thee,  my  husband? '  On  coming  to 
the  sentries  her  supporters  stopped  and  remained  standing  ;  she  moved 
on,  and  walked  once  around  the  pit,  paused  a  moment,  and,  while  mut 
tering  a  prayer,  threw  some  flowers  into  the  fire.  She  then  walked  up 
deliberately  and  steadily  to  the  brink,  stepped  into  the  center  of  the 
flame,  sat  down,  and,  leaning  back  in  the  midst  as  if  reposing  upon  a 
couch,  was  consumed  without  uttering  a  shriek  or  betraying  one  sign  of 
agony.' 

It  is  fine  and  beautiful.  It  compels  one's  rever 
ence  and  respect — no,  has  it  freely,  and  without 
compulsion.  We  see  how  the  custom,  once  started, 
could  continue,  for  the  soul  of  it  is  that  stupendous 
power,  Faith ;  faith  brought  to  the  pitch  of  effective 
ness  by  the  cumulative  force  of  example  and  long 
use  and  custom ;  but  we  cannot  understand  how  the 
first  widows  came  to  take  to  it.  That  is  a  perplex 
ing  detail. 

Sleeman  says  that  it  was  usual  to  play  music  at  the 
Suttee,  but  that  the  white  man's  notion  that  this 


150  Following  the  Equator 

was  to  drown  the  screams  of  the  martyr  is  not  cor 
rect;  that  it  had  a  quite  different  purpose.  It  was 
believed  that  the  martyr  died  prophesying ;  that  the 
prophecies  sometimes  foretold  disaster,  and  it  was 
considered  a  kindness  to  those  upon  whom  it  was  to 
fall  to  drown  the  voice  and  keep  them  in  ignorance 
of  the  misfortune  that  was  to  come. 


CHAPTER  XIII. 

He  had  had  much  experience  of  physicians,  and  said  "  the  only  way  to  keep 
your  health  is  to  eat  what  you  don't  want,  drink  what  you  don't  like,  and  do 
what  you'd  druther  not.'  '—Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

IT  was  a  long  journey  —  two  nights,  one  day,  and 
part  of  another  day,  from  Bombay  eastward  to 
Allahabad ;  but  it  was  always  interesting,  and  it  was 
not  fatiguing.  At  first  the  night  travel  promised  to 
be  fatiguing,  but  that  was  on  account  of  pyjamas. 
This  foolish  nightdress  consists  of  jacket  and 
drawers.  Sometimes  they  are  made  of  silk,  some 
times  of  a  raspy,  scratchy,  slazy  woolen  material 
with  a  sandpaper  surface.  The  drawers  are  loose 
elephant-legged  and  elephant- waisted  things,  and 
instead  of  buttoning  around  the  body  there  is  a 
draw-string  to  produce  the  required  shrinkage.  The 
jacket  is  roomy,  and  one  buttons  it  in  front. 
Pyjamas  are  hot  on  a  hot  night  and  cold  on  a  cold 
night  — defects  which  a  nightshirt  is  free  from.  I 
tried  the  pyjamas  in  order  to  be  in  the  fashion ;  but 
I  was  obliged  to  give  them  up,  I  couldn't  stand 
them.  There  was  no  sufficient  change  from  day- 
gear  to  night-gear.  I  missed  the  refreshing  and 
luxurious  sense,  induced  by  the  nightgown,  of  being 

dsO 


152  Following  the  Equator 

undressed,  emancipated,  set  free  from  restraints  and 
trammels.  In  place  of  that,  I  had  the  worrie^l, 
confined,  oppressed,  suffocated  sense  of  being  abed 
with  my  clothes  on.  All  through  the  warm  half  of 
the  night  the  coarse  surfaces  irritated  my  skin  and 
made  it  feel  baked  and  feverish,  and  the  dreams 
which  came  in  the  fitful  flurries  of  slumber  were 
such  as  distress  the  sleep  of  the  damned,  or  ought 
to ;  and  all  through  the  cold  other  half  of  the  night 
I  could  get  no  time  for  sleep  because  I  had  to  em 
ploy  it  all  in  stealing  blankets.  But  blankets  are  of 
no  value  at  such  a  time ;  the  higher  they  are  piled 
the  more  effectively  they  cork  the  cold  in  and  keep 
it  from  getting  out.  The  result  is  that  your  legs  are 
ice,  and  you  know  how  you  will  feel  by  and  by 
when  you  are  buried.  In  a  sane  interval  I  discarded 
the  pyjamas,  and  led  a  rational  and  comfortable  life 
thenceforth. 

Out  in  the  country  in  India,  the  day  begins  early. 
One  sees  a  plain,  perfectly  flat,  dust-colored  and 
brick-yardy,  stretching  limitlessly  away  on  every  side 
in  the  dim  gray  light,  striped  everywhere  with  hard- 
beaten  narrow  paths,  the  vast  flatness  broken  at 
•wide  intervals  by  bunches  of  spectral  trees  that  mark 
where  villages  are ;  and  along  all  the  paths  are 
slender  women  and  the  black  forms  of  lanky  naked 
men  moving  to  their  work,  the  women  with  brass 
water-jars  on  their  heads,  the  men  carrying  hoes. 
The  man  is  not  entirely  naked ;  always  there  is  a  bit 
of  white  rag,  a  loin-cloth;  it  amounts  to  a  bandage, 


» 


Following  the  Equator  153 

and  is  a  white  accent  on  his  black  person,  like  the 
silver  band  around  the  middle  of  a  pipe-stem. 
Sometimes  he  also  wears  a  fluffy  and  voluminous 
white  turban,  and  this  adds  a  second  accent.  He 
then  answers  properly  to  Miss  Gordon  Cumming's 
flashlight  picture  of  him  —  as  a  person  who  is 
dressed  in  "  a  turban  and  a  pocket  handkerchief." 
All  day  long  one  has  this  monotony  of  dust- 
colored  dead  levels  and  scattering  bunches  of  trees 
and-  mud  villages.  You  soon  realize  that  India  is 
not  beautiful  ;  still  there  is  an  enchantment  about  it 
that  is  beguiling,  and  which  does  not  pall.  You 
cannot  tell  just  what  it  is  that  makes  the  spell,  per 
haps,  but  you  feel  it  and  confess  it,  nevertheless. 
Of  course,  at  bottom,  you  know  in  a  vague  way  that 
it  is  history;  it  is  that  that  affects  you,  a  haunting 
sense  of  the  myriads  of  human  lives  that  have  blos 
somed,  and  withered,  and  perished  here,  repeating 
and  repeating  and  repeating,  century  after  century, 
and  age  after  age,  the  barren  and  meaningless  pro 
cess;  it  is  this  sense  that  gives  to  this  forlorn,  un 
comely  land  power  to  speak  to  the  spirit  and  make 
friends  with  it;  to  speak  to  it  with  a  voice  bitter 
with  satire,  but  eloquent  with  melancholy.  The  , 
deserts  of  Australia  and  the  ice-barrens  of  Green 
land  have  no  speech,  for  they  have  no  venerable 
history;  with  nothing  to  tell  of  man  and  his  , 
vanities,  his  fleeting  glories  and  his  miseries,  they 
have  nothing  wherewith  to  spiritualize  their  ugliness 
and  veil  it  with  a  charm. 

"  «^Ti~ 


154  Following  the  Equator 

There  is  nothing  pretty  about  an  Indian  village  — 
a  mud  one  —  and  I  do  not  remember  that  we  saw 
any  but  mud  ones  on  that  long  flight  to  Allahabad. 
It  is  a  little  bunch  of  dirt-colored  mud  hovels 
jammed  together  within  a  mud  wall.  As  a  rule, 
the  rains  had  beaten  down  parts  of  some  of  the 
houses,  and  this  gave  the  village  the  aspect  of  a 
mouldering  and  hoary  ruin.  I  believe  the  cattle 
and  the  vermin  live  inside  the  wall ;  for  I  saw  cattle 
coming  out  and  cattle  going  in;  and  whenever  I 
saw  a  villager,  he  was  scratching.  This  last  is  only 
circumstantial  evidence,  but  I  think  it  has  value. 
The  village  has  a  battered  little  temple  or  two,  big 
enough  to  hold  an  idol,  and  with  custom  enough  to 
fat-up  a  priest  and  keep  him  comfortable.  Where 
there  are  Mohammedans  there  are  generally  a  few 
sorry  tombs  outside  the  village  that  have  a  decayed 
and  neglected  look.  The  villages  interested  me  be 
cause  of  things  which  Major  Sleeman  says  about 
them  in  his  books  —  particularly  what  he  says  about 
the  division  of  labor  in  them.  He  says  that  the 
whole  face  of  India  is  parceled  out  into  estates  of 
villages ;  that  nine-tenths  of  the  vast  population  of 
the  land  consist  of  cultivators  of  the  soil ;  that  it  is 
these  cultivators  who  inhabit  the  villages ;  that  there 
are  certain  "  established  "  village  servants  —  mechan 
ics  and  others  who  are  apparently  paid  a  wage  by 
the  village  at  large,  and  whose  callings  remain  in 
certain  families  and  are  handed  down  from  father 
to  son,  like  an  estate.  He  gives  a  list  of  these 


Following  the  Equator  155 

established  servants :  Priest,  blacksmith,  carpenter, 
accountant,  washerman,  basket-maker,  potter, 
watchman,  barber,  shoemaker,  brazier,  confectioner, 
weaver,  dyer,  etc.  In  his  day  witches  abounded, 
and  it  was  not  thought  good  business  wisdom  for  a 
man  to  marry  his  daughter  into  a  family  that  hadn't 
a  witch  in  it,  for  she  would  need  a  witch  on  the 
premises  to  protect  her  children  from  the  evil  spells 
which  would  certainly  be  cast  upon  them  by  the 
witches  connected  with  the  neighboring  families. 

The  office  of  midwife  was  hereditary  in  the  family 
of  the  basket-maker.  It  belonged  to  his  wife.  She 
might  not  be  competent,  but  the  office  was  hers, 
anyway.  Her  pay  was  not  high  —  25  cents  for  a 
boy,  and  half  as  much  for  a  girl.  The  girl  was  not 
desired,  because  she  would  be  a  disastrous  expense 
by  and  by.  As  soon  as  she  should  be  old  enough 
to  begin  to  wear  clothes  for  propriety's  sake,  it 
would  be  a  disgrace  to  the  family  if  she  were  not 
married ;  and  to  marry  her  meant  financial  ruin ; 
for  by  custom  the  father  must  spend  upon  feasting 
and  wedding-display  everything  he  had  and  all  he 
could  borrow  —  in  fact,  reduce  himself  to  a  condi 
tion  of  poverty  which  he  might  never  more  recover 
from. 

It  was  the  dread  of  this  prospective  ruin  which 
made  the  killing  of  girl-babies  so  prevalent  in  India 
in  the  old  days  before  England  laid  the  iron  hand  of 
her  prohibitions  upon  the  piteous  slaughter.  One 
may  judge  of  how  prevalent  the  custom  was,  by  one 


156  Following  the  Equator 

of  Sleeman's  casual  electrical  remarks,  when  he 
speaks  of  children  at  play  in  villages  —  where  girl- 
voices  were  never  heard  ! 

The  wedding-display  folly  is  still  in  full  force  in 
India,  and  by  consequence  the  destruction  of  girl- 
babies  is  still  furtively  practiced ;  but  not  largely, 
because  of  the  vigilance  of  the  government  and  the 
sternness  of  the  penalties  it  levies. 

In  some  parts  of  India  the  village  keeps  in  its  pay 
three  other  servants :  an  astrologer  to  tell  the  villager 
when  he  may  plant  his  crop,  or  make  a  journey,  or 
marry  a  wife,  or  strangle  a  child,  or  borrow  a  dog, 
or  climb  a  tree,  or  catch  a  rat,  or  swindle  a  neigh 
bor,  without  offending  the  alert  and  solicitous 
heavens;  and  what  his  dream  means,  if  he  has  had 
one  and  was  not  bright  enough  to  interpret  it  him 
self  by  the  details  of  his  dinner;  the  two  other 
established  servants  were  the  tiger-persuader  and 
the  hailstorm  discourager.  The  one  kept  away  the 
tigers  if  he  could,  and  collected  the  wages  anyway, 
and  the  other  kept  off  the  hailstorms,  or  explained 
why  he  failed.  He  charged  the  same  for  explaining 
a  failure  that  he  did  for  scoring  a  success.  A  man 
is  an  idiot  who  can't  earn  a  living  in  India. 

Major  Sleeman  reveals  the  fact  that  the  trade 
union  and  the  boycott  are  antiquities  in  India. 
India  seems  to  have  originated  everything.  The 
"sweeper"  belongs  to  the  bottom  caste;  he  is  the 
lowest  of  the  low  —  all  other  castes  despise  him  and 
scorn  his  office.  But  that  does  not  trouble  him. 


Following  the  Equator  157 

His  caste  is  a  caste,  and  that  is  sufficient  for  him, 
and  so  he  is  proud  of  it,  not  ashamed.  Sleemar? 
says: 

"It  is  perhaps  not  known  to  many  of  my  countrymen,  even  in  India, 
that  in  every  town  and  city  in  the  country  the  right  of  sweeping  the 
houses  and  streets  is  a  monopoly,  and  is  supported  entirely  by  the  pride 
of  caste  among  the  scavengers,  who  are  all  of  the  lowest  class.  The 
right  of  sweeping  within  a  certain  range  is  recognized  by  the  caste  to 
belong  to  a  certain  member  ;  and  if  any  other  member  presumes  to 
sweep  within  that  range,  he  is  excommunicated  —  no  other  member  will 
smoke  out  of  his  pipe  or  drink  out  of  his  jug  ;  and  he  can  get  restored 
to  caste  only  by  a  feast  to  the  whole  body  of  sweepers.  If  any  house 
keeper  within  a  particular  circle  happens  to  offend  the  sweeper  of  that 
range,  none  of  his  filth  will  be  removed  until  he  pacifies  him,  because 
no  other  sweeper  will  dare  to  touch  it ;  and  the  people  of  a  town  are 
often  more  tyrannized  over  by  these  people  than  by  any  other." 

A  footnote  by  Major  Sleeman's  editor,  Mr.  Vin 
cent  Arthur  Smith,  says  that  in  our  day  this  tyranny 
of  the  sweepers'  guild  is  one  of  the  many  difficulties 
which  bar  the  progress  of  Indian  sanitary  reform. 
Think  of  this : 

"  The  sweepers  cannot  be  readily  coerced,  because  no  Hindoo  01 
Mussulman  would  do  their  work  to  save  his  life,  nor  will  he  pollute 
himself  by  beating  the  refractory  scavenger." 

They  certainly  do  seem  to  have  the  whip-hand ; 
it  would  be  difficult  to  imagine  a  more  impregnable 
position.  'The  vested  rights  described  in  the  text 
are  so  fully  recognized  in  practice  that  they  are 
frequently  the  subject  of  sale  or  mortgage."  Just 
like  a  milk-route ;  or  like  a  London  crossing-sweeper- 
ship.  It  is  said  that  the  London  crossing-sweeper's 
right  to  his  crossing  is  recognized  by  the  rest  of  the 
guild;  that  they  protect  him  in  its  possession \  that 

TT** 


158  Following  the  Equator 

certain  choice  crossings  are  valuable  property,  and 
are  salable  at  high  figures.  I  have  noticed  that 
the  man  who  sweeps  in  front  of  the  Army  and  Navy 
Stores  has  a  wealthy  South  African  aristocratic  style 
about  him;  and  when  he  is  off  his  guard,  he  has 
exactly  that  look  on  his  face  which  you  always  sec 
in  the  face  of  a  man  who  is  saving  up  his 
daughter  to  marry  her  to  a  duke. 

It  appears  from  Sleeman  that  in  India  the  occupa 
tion  of  elephant-driver  is  confined  to  Mohammedans. 
I  wonder  why  that  is.  The  water-carrier  (bJieestie) 
is  a  Mohammedan,  but  it  is  said  that  the  reason  of 
that  is,  that  the  Hindoo's  religion  does  not  allow 
him  to  touch  the  skin  of  dead  kine,  and  that  is  what 
the  water-sack  is  made  of;  it  would  defile  him. 
And  it  doesn't  allow  him  to  eat  meat;  the  animal 
that  furnished  the  meat  was  murdered,  and  to  take 
any  creature's  life  is  a  sin.  It  is  a  good  and  gentle 
religion,  but  inconvenient. 

A  great  Indian  river,  at  low  water,  suggests  the 
familiar  anatomical  picture  of  a  skinned  human 
body,  the  intricate  mesh  of  interwoven  muscles  and 
tendons  to  stand  for  water-channels,  and  the  archi 
pelagoes  of  fat  and  flesh  inclosed  by  them  to  stand 
for  the  sandbars.  Somewhere  on  this  journey  we 
passed  such  a  river,  and  on  a  later  journey  we  saw 
in  the  Sutlej  the  duplicate  of  that  river.  Curious 
rivers  they  are ;  low  shores  a  dizzy  distance  apart, 
with  nothing  between  but  an  enormous  acreage  of 
sand-flats  with  sluggish  little  veins  of  water  dribbling 


Following  the  Equator  159 

around  amongst  them ;  Saharas  of  sand,  smallpox- 
pitted  with  footprints  punctured  in  belts  as  straight 
as  the  equator  clear  from  the  one  shore  to  the  other 
(barring  the  channel-interruptions) — a  dry-shod 
ferry,  you  see.  Long  railway  bridges  are  required 
for  this  sort  of  rivers,  and  India  has  them.  You 
approach  Allahabad  by  a  very  long  one.  It  was 
now  carrying  us  across  the  bed  of  the  Jumna,  a  bed 
which  did  not  seem  to  have  been  slept  in  for  one 
while  or  more.  It  wasn't  all  river-bed — -most  of  it 
was  overflow  ground. 

Allahabad  means  "City  of  God."  I  get  this 
from  the  books.  From  a  printed  curiosity — a 
letter  written  by  one  of  those  brave  and  confident 
Hindoo  strugglers  with  the  English  tongue,  called  a 
"babu" — I  got  a  more  compressed  translation: 
**  Godville."  It  is  perfectly  correct,  but  that  is  the 
most  that  can  be  said  for  it. 

We  arrived  in  the  forenoon,  and  short-handed; 
for  Satan  gDt  left  behind  somewhere  that  morning, 
and  did  not  overtake  us  until  after  nightfall.  It 
seemed  very  peaceful  without  him.  The  world 
seemed  asleep  and  dreaming. 

I  did  not  see  the  native  town,  I  think.  I  do  not 
remember  why;  for  an  incident  connects  it  with  the 
Great  Mutiny,  and  that  is  enough  to  make  any 
place  interesting.  But  I  saw  the  English  part  of 
the  city.  It  is  a  town  of  wide  avenues  and  noble 
distances,  and  is  comely  and  alluring,  and  full  of 
suggestions  of  comfort  and  leisure,  and  of  the 


160  Following  the  Equator 

serenity  which  a  good  conscience  buttressed  by  a 
sufficient  bank  account  gives.  The  bungalows 
(dwellings)  stand  well  back  in  the  seclusion  and 
privacy  of  large  enclosed  compounds  (private 
grounds,  as  we  should  say)  and  in  the  shade  and 
shelter  of  trees.  Even  the  photographer  and  the 
prosperous  merchant  ply  their  industries  in  the 
elegant  reserve  of  big  compounds,  and  the  citizens 
drive  in  there  upon  their  business  occasions.  And 
not  in  cabs  —  no;  in  the  Indian  cities  cabs  are  for 
the  drifting  stranger;  all  the  white  citizens  have 
private  carriages ;  and  each  carriage  has  a  flock  of 
white-turbaned  black  footmen  and  drivers  all  over  it. 
The  vicinity  of  a  lecture-hall  looks  like  a  snowstorm, 
and  makes  the  lecturer  feel  like  an  opera.  India 
has  many  names,  and  they  are  correctly  descriptive. 
It  is  the  Land  of  Contradictions,  the  Land  of 
Subtlety  and  Superstition,  the  Land  of  Wealth  and 
Poverty,  the  Land  of  Splendor  and  Desolation,  the 
Land  of  Plague  and  Famine,  the  Land  of  the  Thug 
and  the  Poisoner,  and  of  the  Meek  and  the  Patient, 
the  Land  of  the  Suttee,  the  Land  of  the  Unreinstata- 
ble  Widow,  the  Land  where  All  Life  is  Holy,  the 
Land  of  Cremation,  the  Land  where  the  Vulture  is  a 
Grave  and  a  Monument,  the  Land  of  the  Multitudi 
nous  Gods ;  and  if  signs  go  for  anything,  it  is  the 
Land  of  the  Private  Carriage. 

In  Bombay  the  forewoman  of  a  millinery  shop 
came  to  the  hotel  in  her  private  carriage  to  take  the 
measure  for  a  gown  — not  for  me,  but  for  another. 


Following  the  Equator  161 

She  had  come  out  to  India  to  make  a  temporary 
stay,  but  was  extending  it  indefinitely;  indeed,  she 
was  purposing  to  end  her  days  there.  In  London, 
she  said,  her  work  had  been  hard,  her  hours  long; 
for  economy's  sake  she  had  had  to  live  in  shabby 
rooms  and  far  away  from  the  shop,  watch  the 
pennies,  deny  herself  many  of  the  common  comforts 
of  life,  restrict  herself  in  effect  to  its  bare  necessities, 
eschew  cabs,  travel  third-class  by  underground  train 
to  and  from  her  work,  swallowing  coal-smoke  and 
cinders  all  the  way,  and  sometimes  troubled  with 
the  society  of  men  and  women  who  were  less  desir 
able  than  the  smoke  and  the  cinders.  But  in  Bom 
bay,  on  almost  any  kind  of  wages,  she  could  live  in 
comfort,  and  keep  her  carriage,  and  have  six  servants 
in  place  of  the  woman-of-all-work  she  had  had  in 
her  English  home.  Later,  in  Calcutta,  I  found  that 
the  Standard  Oil  clerks  had  small  one-horse  vehicles, 
and  did  no  walking;  and  I  was  told  that  the  clerks 
of  the  other  large  concerns  there  had  the  like  equip 
ment.  But  to  return  to  Allahabad. 

I  was  up  at  dawn,  the  next  morning.  In  India 
the  tourist's  servant  does  not  sleep  in  a  room  in  the 
hotel,  but  rolls  himself  up  head  and  ears  in  his 
blanket  and  stretches  himself  on  the  veranda,  across 
the  front  of  his  master's  door,  and  spends  the  night 
there.  I  don't  believe  anybody's  servant  occupies  a 
room.  Apparently,  the  bungalow  servants  sleep  on 
the  veranda ;  it  is  roomy,  and  goes  ail  around  the 
house.  I  speak  of  men-servants;  I  saw  none  of  the 
11** 


162  Following  the  Equator 

other  sex.  I  think  there  are  none,  except  child- 
nurses.  I  was  up  at  dawn,  and  walked  around  the 
veranda,  past  the  rows  of  sleepers.  In  front  of  one 
door  a  Hindoo  servant  was  squatting,  waiting  for 
his  master  to  call  him.  He  had  polished  the  yellow 
shoes  and  placed  them  by  the  door,  and  now  he 
had  nothing  to  do  but  wait.  It  was  freezing  cold, 
but  there  he  was,  as  motionless  as  a  sculptured 
image,  and  as  patient.  It  troubled  me.  I  wanted 
to  say  to  him,  "  Don't  crouch  there  like  that  and 
freeze ;  nobody  requires  it  of  you ;  stir  around  and 
get  warm."  But  I  hadn't  the  words.  I  thought  of 
saying  jeldy  jow,  but  I  couldn't  remember  what  it 
meant,  so  I  didn't  say  it.  I  knew  another  phrase, 
but  it  wouldn't  come  to  my  mind.  I  moved  on, 
purposing  to  dismiss  him  from  my  thoughts,  but  his 
bare  legs  and  bare  feet  kept  him  there.  They  kept 
drawing  me  back  from  the  sunny  side  to  a  point 
whence  I  could  see  him.  At  the  end  of  an  hour  he 
had  not  changed  his  attitude  in  the  least  degree.  It 
was  a  curious  and  impressive  exhibition  of  meekness 
and  patience,  or  fortitude,  or  indifference,  I  did  not 
know  which.  But  it  worried  me,  and  it  was  spoiling 
my  morning.  In  fact,  it  spoiled  two  hours  of  it 
quite  thoroughly.  I  quitted  this  vicinity,  then,  and 
left  him  to  punish  himself  as  much  as  he  might 
want  to.  But  up  to  that  time  the  man  had  not 
changed  his  attitude  a  hair.  He  will  always  remain 
with  me,  I  suppose;  his  figure  never  grows  vague 
in  my  memory.  Whenever  I  read  of  Indian  resig- 


Following  the  Equator  163 

nation,  Indian  patience  under  wrongs,  hardships, 
and  misfortunes,  he  comes  before  me.  He  becomes 
a  personification,  and  stands  for  India  in  trouble. 
And  for  untold  ages  India  in  trouble  has  been 
pursued  with  the  very  remark  which  I  was  going  to 
utter  but  didn't,  because  its  meaning  had  slipped 
me  :  Jeldy  jow !  (  "  Come,  shove  along  ! "  )  Why, 
it  was  the  very  thing. 

In  the  early  brightness  we  made  a  long  drive  out 
to  the  Fort.  Part  of  the  way  was  beautiful.  It  led 
under  stately  trees  and  through  groups  of  native 
houses  and  by  the  usual  village  well,  where  the 
picturesque  gangs  are  always  flocking  to  and  fro  and 
laughing  and  chattering;  and  this  time  brawny  men 
were  deluging  their  bronze  bodies  with  the  limpid 
water,  and  making  a  refreshing  and  enticing  show 
of  it;  enticing,  for  the  sun  was  already  transacting 
business,  firing  India  up  for  the  day.  There  was 
plenty  of  this  early  bathing  going  on,  for  it  was  get 
ting  toward  breakfast  time,  and  with  an  unpurified 
body  the  Hindoo  must  not  eat. 

Then  we  struck  into  the  hot  plain,  and  found  the 
roads  crowded  with  pilgrims  of  both  sexes,  for  one 
of  the  great  religious  fairs  of  India  was  being  held, 
just  beyond  the  Fort,  at  the  junction  of  the  sacred 
rivers,  the  Ganges  and  the  Jumna.  Three  sacred 
rivers,  I  should  have  said,  for  there  is  a  subterranean 
one.  Nobody  has  seen  it,  but  that  doesn't  signify. 
The  fact  that  it  is  there  is  enough.  These  pilgrims 
had  come  from  all  over  India  some  of  them  had 


164  Following  the  Equator 

been  months  on  the  way,  plodding  patiently  along 
in  the  heat  and  dust,  worn,  poor,  hungry,  but  sup 
ported  and  sustained  by  an  unwavering  faith  and 
belief;  they  were  supremely  happy  and  content, 
now ;  their  full  and  sufficient  reward  was  at  hand ; 
they  were  going  to  be  cleansed  from  every  vestige 
of  sin  and  corruption  by  these  holy  waters  which 
make  utterly  pure  whatsoever  thing  they  touch,  even 
the  dead  and  rotten.  It  is  wonderful,  the  power  of 
a  faith  like  that,  that  can  make  multitudes  upon 
multitudes  of  the  old  and  weak  and  the  young  and 
frail  enter  without  hesitation  or  complaint  upon  such 
incredible  journeys  and  endure  the  resultant  miseries 
without  repining.  It  is  done  in  love,  or  it  is  done 
in  fear;  I  do  not  know  which  it  is.  No  matter 
what  the  impulse  is,  the  act  born  of  it  is  beyond 
imagination  marvelous  to  our  kind  of  pecple,  the 
cold  whites.  There  are  choice  great  natures  among 
us  that  could  exhibit  the  equivalent  of  this  prodigious 
self-sacrifice,  but  the  rest  of  us  know  that  we  should 
not  be  equal  to  anything  approaching  it.  Still,  we 
all  talk  self-sacrifice,  and  this  makes  me  hope  that 
we  are  large  enough  to  honor  it  in  the  Hindoo. 

Two  millions  of  natives  arrive  at  this  fair  every 
year.  How  many  start,  and  die  on  the  road,  from 
age  and  fatigue  and  disease  and  scanty  nourishment, 
and  how  many  die  on  the  return,  from  the  same 
causes,  no  one  knows;  but  the  tale  is  great,  one 
may  say  enormous.  Every  twelfth  year  is  held  to 
be  a  year  of  peculiar  grace ;  a  greatly  augmented 


Following  the  Equator  16$ 

volume  of  pilgrims  results  then.  The  twelfth  yeai 
has  held  this  distinction  since  the  remotest  times,  it 
is  said.  It  is  said  also  that  there  is  to  be  but  one 
more  twelfth  year  —  for  the  Ganges.  After  that, 
that  holiest  of  all  sacred  rivers  will  cease  to  be  holy, 
and  will  be  abandoned  by  the  pilgrims  for  many 
centuries ;  how  many,  the  wise  men  have  not  statea. 
At  the  end  of  that  interval  it  will  become  holy 
again.  Meantime,  the  data  will  be  arranged  by 
those  people  who  have  charge  of  all  such  matters, 
the  great  chief  Brahmins.  It  will  be  like  shutting 
down  a  mint.  At  a  first  glance  it  looks  most  un- 
brahminically  uncommercial,  but  I  am  not  disturbed, 
being  soothed  and  tranquillized  by  their  reputation. 
"  Brer  fox  he  lay  low,"  as  Uncle  Remus  says;  and 
at  the  judicious  time  he  will  spring  something  on  the 
Indian  public  which  will  show  that  he  was  not 
financially  asleep  when  he  took  the  Ganges  out  of 
the  market. 

Great  numbers  of  the  natives  along  the  roads 
were  bringing  away  holy  water  from  the  rivers. 
They  would  carry  it  far  and  wide  in  India  and  sell 
it.  Tavernier,  the  French  traveler  (i7th  century), 
notes  that  Ganges  water  is  often  given  at  weddings, 
"each  guest  receiving  a  cup  or  two,  according  to 
the  liberality  of  the  host;  sometimes  2,000  or  3,000 
rupees'  worth  of  it  is  consumed  at  a  wedding." 

The  Fort  is  a  huge  old  structure,  and  has  had  a 
large  experience  in  religions.  In  its  great  court 
stands  a  monolith  which  was  placed  there  more 


166  Following  the  Equator 

than  2,000  years  ago  to  preach  Buddhism  by  its 
pious  inscription ;  the  Fort  was  built  three  centuries 
ago  by  a  Mohammedan  Emperor  —  a  resanctification 
of  the  place  in  the  interest  of  that  religion.  There 
is  a  Hindoo  temple,  too,  with  subterranean  ramifica 
tions  stocked  with  shrines  and  idols ;  and  now  the 
Fort  belongs  to  the  English,  it  contains  a  Christian 
Church.  Insured  in  all  the  companies. 

From  the  lofty  ramparts  one  has  a  fine  view  of 
the  sacred  rivers.  They  join  at  that  point  —  the 
pale  blue  Jumna,  apparently  clean  and  clear,  and 
the  muddy  Ganges,  dull  yellow  and  not  clean.  On 
a  long  curved  spit  between  the  rivers,  towns  of  tents 
were  visible,  with  a  multitude  of  fluttering  pennons, 
and  a  mighty  swarm  of  pilgrims.  It  was  a  trouble 
some  place  to  get  down  to,  and  not  a  quiet  place 
when  you  arrived ;  but  it  was  interesting.  There 
was  a  world  of  activity  and  turmoil  and  noise,  partly 
religious,  partly  commercial;  for  the  Mohammedans 
were  there  to  curse  and  sell,  and  the  Hindoos  to  buy 
and  pray.  It  is  a  fair  as  well  as  a  religious  festival. 
Crowds  were  bathing,  praying,  and  drinking  the 
purifying  waters,  and  many  sick  pilgrims  had  come 
long  journeys  in  palanquins  to  be  healed  of  their 
maladies  by  a  bath ;  or  if  that  might  not  be,  then  to 
die  on  the  blessed  banks  and  so  make  sure  of 
heaven.  There  were  fakeers  in  plenty,  with  their 
bodies  dusted  over  with  ashes  and  their  long  hair 
caked  together  with  cow-dung;  for  the  cow  is  holy 
and  so  is  the  rest  of  it;  so  holy  that  the  good 


Following  the  Equator  167 

Hindoo  peasant  frescoes  the  walls  of  his  hut  with 
this  refuse,  and  also  constructs  ornamental  figures 
out  of  it  for  the  gracing  of  his  dirt  floor.  There 
were  seated  families,  fearfully  and  wonderfully 
painted,  who  by  attitude  and  grouping  represented 
the  families  of  certain  great  gods.  There  was  a 
holy  man  who  sat  naked  by  the  day  and  by  the  week 
on  a  cluster  of  iron  spikes,  and  did  not  seem  to 
mind  it;  and  another  holy  man,  who  stood  all  day 
holding  his  withered  arms  motionless  aloft,  and  was 
said  to  have  been  doing  it  for  years.  All  of  these 
performers  have  a  cloth  on  the  ground  beside  them 
for  the  reception  of  contributions,  and  even  the 
poorest  of  the  people  give  a  trifle  and  hope  that  the 
sacrifice  will  be  blessed  to  him.  At  last  came  a 
procession  of  naked  holy  people  marching  by  and 
chanting,  and  I  wrenched  myself  away. 


CHAPTER    XIV. 

The  man  who  is  ostentatious  of  his  modesty  is  twin  to  the  statue  that  wears 
a  fig-leaf. — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  journey  to  Benares  was  all  in  daylight,  and 
occupied  but  a  few  hours.  It  was  admirably 
dusty.  The  dust  settled  upon  you  in  a  thick  ashy 
layer  and  turned  you  into  a  fakeer,  with  nothing 
lacking  to  the  role  but  the  cow  manure  and  the  sense 
of  holiness.  There  was  a  change  of  cars  about  mid- 
afternoon  at  Moghul-serai  —  if  that  was  the  name  — 
and  a  wait  of  two  hours  there  for  the  Benares  train. 
We  could  have  found  a  carriage  and  driven  to  the 
sacred  city,  but  we  should  have  lost  the  wait.  In 
other  countries  a  long  wait  at  a  station  is  a  dull  thing 
and  tedious,  but  one  has  no  right  to  have  that  feel 
ing  in  India.  You  have  the  monster  crowd  of  bc- 
jeweled  natives,  the  stir,  the  bustle,  the  confusion, 
the  shifting  splendors  of  the  costumes  —  dear  me, 
the  delight  of  it,  the  charm  of  it  are  beyond  speech. 
The  two-hour  wait  was  over  too  soon.  Among 
other  satisfying  things  to  look  at  was  a  minor  native 
prince  from  the  backwoods  somewhere,  with  his 
guard  of  honor,  a  ragged  but  wonderfully  gaudy 

(168) 


Following  the  Equator  169 

gang  of  fifty  dark  barbarians  armed  with  rusty  flint 
lock  muskets.  The  general  show  came  so  near  to 
exhausting  variety  that  one  would  have  said  that  no 
addition  to  it  could  be  conspicuous,  but  when  this 
Falstaff  -and  his  motleys  marched  through  it  one  saw 
that  that  seeming  impossibility  had  happened. 

We  got  away  by  and  by,  and  soon  reached  the 
outer  edge  of  Benares;  then  there  was  another  wait; 
but,  as  usual,  with  something  to  look  at.  This  was 
a  cluster  of  little  canvas-boxes  —  palanquins.  A 
canvas-box  is  not  much  of  a  sight  —  when  empty; 
but  when  there  is  a  lady  in  it,  it  is  an  object  of 
interest.  These  boxes  were  grouped  apart,  in  the 
full  blaze  of  the  terrible  sun,  during  the  three- 
quarters  of  an  hour  that  we  tarried  there.  They 
contained  zenana  ladies.  They  had  to  sit  up ;  there 
was  not  room  enough  to  stretch  out.  They  prob 
ably  did  not  mind  it.  They  are  used  to  the  close 
captivity  of  their  dwellings  all  their  lives ;  when  they 
go  a  journey  they  are  carried  to  the  train  in  these 
boxes ;  in  the  train  they  have  to  be  secluded  from 
inspection.  Many  people  pity  them,  and  I  always 
did  it  myself  and  never  charged  anything;  but  it  is 
doubtful  if  this  compassion  is  valued.  While  we 
were  in  India  some  good-hearted  Europeans  in  one 
of  the  cities  proposed  to  restrict  a  large  park  to  the 
use  of  zenana  ladies,  so  that  they  could  go  there 
and  in  assured  privacy  go  about  unveiled  and  enjoy 
the  sunshine  and  air  as  they  had  never  enjoyed  them 
before.  The  good  intentions  back  of  the  proposi- 


170  Following  the  Equator 

tion  were  recognized,  and  sincere  thanks  returned 
for  it,  but  the  proposition  itself  met  with  a  prompt 
declination  at  the  hands  of  those  who  were  author 
ized  to  speak  for  the  zenana  ladies.  Apparently, 
the  idea  was  shocking  to  the  ladies  —  indeed,  it  was 
quite  manifestly  shocking.  Was  that  proposition 
the  equivalent  of  inviting  European  ladies  to  assem 
ble  scantily  and  scandalously  clothed  in  the  seclusion 
of  a  private  park?  It  seemed  to  be  about  that. 

Without  doubt  modesty  is  nothing  less  than  a 
holy  feeling;  and  without  doubt  the  person  whose 
rule  of  modesty  has  been  transgressed  feels  the  same 
sort  of  wound  that  he  would  feel  if  something  made 
holy  to  him  by  his  religion  had  suffered  a  desecra 
tion.  I  say  "rule  of  modesty"  because  there  are 
about  a  million  rules  in  the  world,  and  this  makes  a 
million  standards  to  be  looked  out  for.  Major 
Sleeman  mentions  the  case  of  some  high-caste  veiled 
ladies  who  were  profoundly  scandalized  when  some 
English  young  ladies  passed  by  with  faces  bare  to 
the  world ;  so  scandalized  that  they  spoke  out  with 
strong  indignation  and  wondered  that  people  could 
be  so  shameless  as  to  expose  their  persons  like  that. 
And  yet  "  the  legs  of  the  objectors  were  naked  to 
mid-thigh."  Both  parties  were  clean-minded  and 
irreproachably  modest,  while  abiding  by  their  sep 
arate  rules,  but  they  couldn't  have  traded  rules  for 
a  change  without  suffering  considerable  discomfort. 
All  human  rules  are  more  or  less  idiotic,  I  suppose. 
It  is  best  so,  no  doubt.  The  way  it  is  now,  the 


Following  the  Equator  171 

asylums  can  hold  the  sane  people,  but  if  we  tried  to 
shut  up  the  insane  we  should  run  out  of  building 
materials. 

You  have  a  long  drive  through  the  outskirts  of 
Benares  before  you  get  to  the  hotel.  And  all  the 
aspects  are  melancholy.  It  is  a  vision  of  dusty 
sterility,  decaying  temples,  crumbling  tombs,  broken 
mud  walls,  shabby  huts.  The  whole  region  seems 
to  ache  with  age  and  penury.  It  must  take  ten 
thousand  years  of  want  to  produce  such  an  aspect. 
We  were  still  outside  of  the  great  native  city  when 
we  reached  the  hotel.  It  was  a  quiet  and  homelike 
house,  inviting,  and  manifestly  comfortable.  But 
we  liked  its  annex  better,  and  went  thither.  It  was 
a  mile  away,  perhaps,  and  stood  in  the  midst  of  a 
large  compound,  and  was  built  bungalow  fashion, 
everything  on  the  ground  floor,  and  a  veranda  all 
around.  They  have  doors  in  India,  but  I  don't 
know  why.  They  don't  fasten,  and  they  stand 
open,  as  a  rule,  with  a  curtain  hanging  in  the  door- 
space  to  keep  out  the  glare  of  the  sun.  Still,  there 
is  plenty  of  privacy,  for  no  white  person  will  come 
in  without  notice,  of  course.  The  native  men 
servants  will,  but  they  don't  seem  to  count.  They 
glide  in,  barefoot  and  noiseless,  and  are  in  the 
midst  before  one  knows  it.  At  first  this  is  a  shock, 
and  sometimes  it  is  an  embarrassment;  but  one  has 
to  get  used  to  it,  and  does. 

There  was  one  tree  in  the  compound,  and  a 
monkey  lived  in  it.  At  first  I  was  strongly  interested 


172  Following  the  Equator 

in  the  tree,  for  I  was  told  that  it  was  the  renowned 
peepul — the  tree  in  whose  shadow  you  cannot  tell  a 
lie.  This  one  failed  to  stand  the  test,  and  I  went 
away  from  it  disappointed.  There  was  a  softly 
creaking  well  close  by,  and  a  couple  of  oxen  drew 
water  from  it  by  the  hour,  superintended  by  two 
natives  dressed  in  the  usual  "  turban  and  pocket 
handkerchief."  The  tree  and  the  well  were  the  only 
scenery,  and  so  the  compound  was  a  soothing  and 
lonesome  and  satisfying  place;  and  very  restful 
after  so  many  activities.  There  was  nobody  in  our 
bungalow  but  ourselves;  the  other  guests  were  in 
the  next  one,  where  the  table  d'hote  was  furnished. 
A  body  could  not  be  more  pleasantly  situated. 
Each  room  had  the  customary  bath  attached  —  a 
room  ten  or  twelve  feet  square,  with  a  roomy  stone- 
paved  pit  in  it  and  abundance  of  water.  One  could 
not  easily  improve  upon  this  arrangement,  except 
by  furnishing  it  with  cold  water  and  excluding  the 
hot,  in  deference  to  the  fervency  of  the  climate  ;  but 
that  is  forbidden.  It  would  damage  the  bather's 
health.  The  stranger  is  warned  against  taking  cold 
baths  in  India,  but  even  the  most  intelligent  strangers 
are  fools,  and  they  do  not  obey,  and  so  they  pres 
ently  get  laid  up.  I  was  the  most  intelligent  fool 
that  passed  through,  that  year.  But  I  am  still  more 
intelligent  now.  Now  that  it  is  too  late. 

I  wonder  if  the  dorian,  if  that  is  the  name  of  it,  is 
another  superstition,  like  the  peepul  tree.  There 
was  a  great  abundance  and  variety  of  tropical  fruits, 


Following  the  Equator  173 

but  the  dorian  was  never  in  evidence.  It  was  never 
the  season  for  the  dorian.  It  was  always  going  to 
arrive  from  Burmah  some  time  or  other,  but  it  never 
did.  By  all  accounts,  it  was  a  most  strange  fruit, 
and  incomparably  delicious  to  the  taste,  but  not  to 
the  smell.  Its  rind  was  said  to  exude  a  stench  of 
so  atrocious  a  nature  that  when  a  dorian  was  in  the 
room  even  the  presence  of  a  polecat  was  a  refresh 
ment.  We  found  many  who  had  eaten  the  dorian, 
and  they  all  spoke  of  it  with  a  sort  of  rapture. 
They  said  that  if  you  could  hold  your  nose  until 
the  fruit  was  in  your  mouth  a  sacred  joy  would 
suffuse  you  from  head  to  foot  that  would  make 
you  oblivious  to  the  smell  of  the  rind,  but  that  if 
your  grip  slipped  and  you  caught  the  smell  of  the 
rind  before  the  fruit  was  in  your  mouth,  you  would 
faint.  There  is  a  fortune  in  that  rind.  Some  day 
somebody  will  import  it  into  Europe  and  sell  it  for 
cheese. 

Benares  was  not  a  disappointment.  It  justified 
its  reputation  as  a  curiosity.  It  is  on  high  ground, 
and  overhangs  a  grand  curve  of  the  Ganges.  It  is  a 
vast  mass  of  building,  compactly  crusting  a  hill,  and 
is  cloven  in  all  directions  by  an  intricate  confusion 
of  cracks  which  stand  for  streets.  Tall,  slim  min 
arets  and  beflagged  temple-spires  rise  out  of  it  and 
give  it  picturesqueness,  viewed  from  the  river,  The 
city  is  as  busy  as  an  ant-hill,  and  the  hurly-burly  of 
human  life  swarming  along  the  web  of  narrow  streets 
reminds  one  of  the  ants.  The  sacred  cow  swarms 

12** 


174  Following  the  Equator 

along,  too,  and  goes  whither  she  pleases,  and  takes 
toll  of  the  grain-shops,  and  is  very  much  in  the  way, 
and  is  a  good  deal  of  a  nuisance,  since  she  must  not 
be  molested. 

Benares  is  older  than  history,  older  than  tradition, 
older  even  than  legend,  and  looks  twice  as  old  as  all 
of  them  put  together.  From  a  Hindoo  statement 
quoted  in  Rev.  Mr.  Parker's  compact  and  lucid 
Guide  to  Benares,  I  find  that  the  site  of  the  town 
was  the  beginning-place  of  the  Creation.  It  was 
merely  an  upright  "  lingam,"  at  first,  no  larger  than 
a  stovepipe,  and  stood  in  the  midst  of  a  shoreless 
ocean.  This  was  the  work  of  the  God  Vishnu. 
Later  he  spread  the  lingam  out  till  its  surface  \vas 
ten  miles  across.  Still  it  was  not  large  enough  for 
the  business ;  therefore  he  presently  built  the  globe 
around  it.  Benares  is  thus  the  center  of  the  earth. 
This  is  considered  an  advantage. 

It  has  had  a  tumultuous  history,  both  materially 
and  spiritually.  It  started  Brahminically,  many  ages 
ago ;  then  by  and  by  Buddha  came  in  recent  times 
2,500  years  ago,  and  after  that  it  was  Buddhist  dur 
ing  many  centuries  —  twelve,  perhaps  —  but  the 
Brahmins  got  the  upper-hand  again,  then,  and  have 
held  it  ever  since.  It  is  unspeakably  sacred  in  Hin 
doo  eyes,  and  is  as  unsanitary  as  it  is  sacred,  and 
smells  like  the  rind  of  the  dorian.  It  is  the  head 
quarters  of  the  Brahmin  faith,  and  one-eighth  of  the 
population  are  priests  of  that  church.  But  it  is  not 
an  overstock,  for  they  have  all  India  as  a  prey.  All 


Following  the  Equator  175 

India  flocks  thither  on  pilgrimage,  and  pours  its 
savings  into  the  pockets  of  the  priests  in  a  generous 
stream,  which  never  fails.  A  priest  with  a  good 
stand  on  the  shore  of  the  Ganges  is  much  better  off 
than  the  sweeper  of  the  best  crossing  in  London. 
A  good  stand  is  worth  a  world  of  money.  The 
holy  proprietor  of  it  sits  under  his  grand  spectacular 
umbrella  and  blesses  people  all  his  life,  and  collects 
his  commission,  and  grows  fat  and  rich;  and  the 
stand  passes  from  father  to  son,  down  and  down 
and  down  through  the  ages,  and  remains  a  permanent 
and  lucrative  estate  in  the  family.  As  Mr.  Parker 
suggests,  it  can  become  a  subject  of  dispute,  at  one 
time  or  another,  and  then  the  matter  will  be  settled, 
not  by  prayer  and  fasting  and  consultations  with 
Vishnu,  but  by  the  intervention  of  a  much  more 
puissant  power  —  an  English  court.  In  Bombay  I 
was  told  by  an  American  missionary  that  in  India 
there  are  640  Protestant  missionaries  at  work.  At 
first  it  seemed  an  immense  force,  but  of  course  that 
was  a  thoughtless  idea.  One  missionary  to  500,000 
natives  —  no,  that  is  not  a  force;  it  is  the  reverse  of 
it;  640  marching  against  an  intrenched  camp  of 
300,000,000 — the  odds  are  too  great.  A  force  of 
640  in  Benares  alone  would  have  its  hands  over-full 
with  8,000  Brahmin  priests  for  adversary.  Mission 
aries  need  to  be  well  equipped  with  hope  and  confi 
dence,  and  this  equipment  they  seem  to  have  always 
had  in  all  parts  of  the  world.  Mr.  Parker  has  it. 
It  enables  him  to  get  a  favorable  outlook  out  of 


176  Following  the  Equator 

statistics  which  might  add  up  differently  with  other 
mathematicians.  For  instance : 

"  During  the  past  few  years  competent  observers 
declare  that  the  number  of  pilgrims  to  Benares  has 
increased." 

And  then  he  adds  up  this  fact  and  gets  this  con 
clusion  : 

"  But  the  revival,  if  so  it  may  be  called,  has  in  it 
the  marks  of  death.  It  is  a  spasmodic  struggle  be 
fore  dissolution." 

In  this  world  we  have  seen  the  Roman  Catholic 
power  dying;  upon  these  same  terms,  for  many 
centuries.  Many  a  time  we  have  gotten  all  ready 
for  the  funeral  and  found  it  postponed  again,  on 
account  of  the  weather  or  something.  Taught  by 
experience,  we  ought  not  to  put  on  our  things  for 
this  Brahminical  one  till  we  see  the  procession  move. 
Apparently  one  of  the  most  uncertain  things  in  the 
world  is  the  funeral  of  a  religion. 

I  should  have  been  glad  to  acquire  some  sort  of 
idea  of  Hindoo  theology,  but  the  difficulties  were 
too  great,  the  matter  was  too  intricate.  Even  the 
mere  A,  B,  C  of  it  is  baffling.  There  is  a  trinity  — 
Brahma,  Shiva,  and  Vishnu  —  independent  powers, 
apparently,  though  one  cannot  feel  quite  sure  of 
that,  because  in  one  of  the  temples  there  is  an 
image  where  an  attempt  has  been  made  to  concen 
trate  the  three  in  one  person.  The  three  have  other 
names  and  plenty  of  them,  and  this  makes  confusion 
;n  one's  mind.  The  three  have  wives  and  the  wives 


Following  the  Equator  177 

have  several  names,  and  this  increases  the  confusion. 
There  are  children,  the  children  have  many  names, 
and  thus  the  confusion  goes  on  and  on.  It  is  not 
worth  while  to  try  to  get  any  grip  upon  the  cloud 
of  minor  gods,  there  are  too  many  of  them. 

It  is  even  a  justifiable  economy  to  leave  Brahma, 
the  chiefest  god  of  all,  out  of  your  studies,  for  he 
seems  to  cut  no  great  figure  in  India.  The  vast 
bulk  of  the  national  worship  is  lavished  upon  Shiva 
and  Vishnu  and  their  families.  Shiva's  symbol — - 
me  "  lingam  "  with  which  Vishnu  began  the  Crea 
tion —  is  worshiped  by  everybody,  apparently.  It 
fe  the  commonest  object  in  Benares.  It  is  on  view 
everywhere,  it  is  garlanded  with  flowers,  offerings 
are  made  to  it,  it  suffers  no  neglect.  Commonly  it 
is  an  upright  stone,  shaped  like  a  thimble  —  some 
times  like  an  elongated  thimble.  This  priapus- 
worship,  then,  is  older  than  history.  Mr.  Parker 
says  that  the  lingams  in  Benares  "  outnumber  the 
inhabitants." 

In  Benares  there  are  many  Mohammedan  mosques. 
There  are  Hindoo  temples  without  number  —  these 
quaintly  shaped  and  elaborately  sculptured  little 
stone  jugs  crowd  all  the  lanes.  The  Ganges  itself 
and  every  individual  drop  of  water  in  it  are  temples. 
Religion,  then,  is  the  business  of  Benares,  just  as 
gold-production  is  the  business  of  Johannesburg. 
Other  industries  count  for  nothing  as  compared  with 
the  vast  and  all-absorbing  rush  and  drive  and  boom 
of  the  town's  specialty.  Benares  is  the  sacredest  of 
12  ». 


178  Following  the  Equator 

sacred  cities.  The  moment  you  step  across  the 
sharply-defined  line  which  separates  it  from  the  rest 
of  the  globe,  you  stand  upon  ineffably  and  unspeak 
ably  holy  ground.  Mr.  Parker  says:  "  It  is  impos 
sible  to  convey  any  adequate  idea  of  the  intense 
feelings  of  veneration  and  affection  with  which  the 
pious  Hindoo  regards  'Holy  Kashi  '  (Benares)." 
And  then  he  gives  you  this  vivid  and  moving  picture : 

"  Let  a  Hindoo  regiment  be  marched  through  the  district,  and  as 
soon  as  they  cross  the  line  and  enter  the  limits  of  the  holy  place 
they  rend  the  air  with  cries  of  'Kashi  ji  ki  jai  —  jai !  '  (Holy 
Kashi!  Hail  to  thee!  Hail!  Hail!  Hail!)  The  weary  pilgrim, 
scarcely  able  to  stand  with  age  and  weakness,  blinded  by  the  dust  and 
heat,  and  almost  dead  with  fatigue,  crawls  out  of  the  oven -like  railway 
carriage,  and  as  soon  as  his  feet  touch  the  ground  he  lifts  up  his  withered 
hands  and  utters  the  same  pious  exclamation.  Let  a  European  in  some 
distant  city  in  casual  talk  in  the  bazar  mention  the  fact  that  he  has  lived 
at  Benares,  and  at  once  voices  will  be  raised  to  call  down  blessings  on 
his  head,  for  a  dweller  in  Benares  is  of  all  men  most  blessed." 

It  makes  our  own  religious  enthusiasm  seem  pale 
and  cold.  Inasmuch  as  the  life  of  religion  is  in  the 
heart,  not  the  head,  Mr.  Parker's  touching  picture 
seems  to  promise  a  sort  of  indefinite  postponement 
of  that  funeral. 


CHAPTER  XV. 

Let  me  make  the  superstitions  of  a  nation  and  I  care  not  who  makes  its 
laws  or  its  songs  either. — Pudd'nkead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

YES,  the  city  of  Benares  is  in  effect  just  a  big 
church,  a  religious  hive,  whose  every  cell  is  a 
temple,  a  shrine,  or  a  mosque,  and  whose  every 
conceivable  earthly  and  heavenly  good  is  procurable 
under  one  roof,  so  to  speak  —  a  sort  of*  Army  and 
Navy  Stores,  theologically  stocked. 

I  will  make  out  a  little  itinerary  for  the  pilgrim ; 
then  you  will  see  how  handy  the  system  is,  how 
convenient,  how  comprehensive.  If  you  go  to 
Benares  with  a  serious  desire  to  spiritually  benefit 
yourself,  you  will  find  it  valuable.  I  got  some  of 
the  facts  from  conversations  with  the  Rev.  Mr. 
Parker  and  the  others  from  his  Guide  to  Benares; 
they  are  therefore  trustworthy. 

1 .  Purification.     At  sunrise  you  must  go  down  to 
the  Ganges  and  bathe,  pray,  and  drink  some  of  the 
water.     This  is  for  your  general  purification. 

2.  Protection   against  Hunger.     Next,  you   must 
fortify  yourself  against  the  sorrowful  earthly  ill  just 
named.     This  you  will  do  by  worshiping  for  a  mo 
ment  in  the  Cow  Temple.     By  the  door  of  it  you 

L*»  (179) 


180  Following  the  Equator 

will  find  an  image  of  Ganesh,  son  of  Shiva;  it  has 
the  head  of  an  elephant  on  a  human  body;  its  face 
and  hands  are  of  silver.  You  will  worship  it  a  little, 
and  pass  on,  into  a  covered  veranda,  where  you  will 
find  devotees  reciting  from  the  sacred  books,  with 
the  help  of  instructors.  In  this  place  are  groups  of 
rude  and  dismal  idols.  You  may  contribute  some 
thing  for  their  support;  then  pass  into  the  temple, 
a  grim  and  stenchy  place,  for  it  is  populous  with 
sacred  cows  and  with  beggars.  You  will  give  some 
thing  to  the  beggars,  and  "  reverently  kiss  the  tails  " 
of  such  cows  as  pass  along,  for  these  cows  are 
peculiarly  holy,  and  this  act  of  worship  will  secure 
you  from  hunger  for  the  day. 

3.  "The   Poor  Mans   Friend."     You    will    next 
worship  this  god.     He  is   at  the  bottom  of  a  stone 
cistern    in   the   temple   of    Dalbhyeswar,    under   the 
shade  of  a  noble  peepul  tree  on  the  bluff  overlook 
ing  the  Ganges,  so  you   must  go  back  to  the  river. 
The    Poor  Man's    Friend    is    the    god    of    material 
prosperity  in    general,  and   the   god   of  the   rain   in 
particular.     You  will  secure  material   prosperity,  or 
both,  by   worshiping  him.      He   is   Shiva,    under   a 
new  alias,  and  he  abides  in  the  bottom  of  that  cistern 
in   the   form  of   a  stone  lingam.     You  pour  Ganges 
water   over  him  and   in  return  for  this  homage  you 
get  the   promised   benefits.     If  there   is   any  delay 
about   the  rain  you    must   pour  water   in   until  the 
cistern  is  full ;   the  rain  will  then  be  sure  to  come. 

4.  Fever.     At  the   Kedar    Ghat  you  will   find    a 


Following  the  Equator  181 

long  flight  of  stone  steps  leading  down  to  the  river 
Half  way  down  is  a  tank  filled  with  sewage.      Drink 
as  much  of  it  as  you  want.     It  is  for  fever. 

5.  Smallpox.     Go  straight  from  there  to  the  cen 
tral  Ghat.     At  its  upstream  end  you  will  find  a  small 
whitewashed   building,  which  is   a  temple  sacred  to 
Sitala,   goddess   of  smallpox.     Her   under-study   is 
there  —  a  rude  human  figure  behind  a  brass  screen. 
You  will  worship  this  for  reasons  to   be  furnished 
presently. 

6.  The    Well  of  Fate.     For  certain   reasons  you 
will  next  go  and  do  homage  at  this  well.     You  will 
find   it  in   the  Dandpan  Temple,  in   the   city.     The 
sunlight   falls    into    it   from    a    square    hole    in    the 
masonry  above.     You  will  approach  it  with  awe,  for 
your  life  is  now  at  stake.     You  will  bend  over  and 
look.     If  the  fates  are  propitious,  you  will  see  your 
face  pictured  in  the  water  far  down  in  the  well.     If 
matters  have  been  otherwise  ordered,  a  sudden  cloud 
will   ma*k  the   sun  and  you  will  see  nothing.     This 
means   that  you   have   not  six   months  to  live.     If 
you  are  already  at  the  point  of  death,  your  circum 
stances  are  now  serious.     There  is  no  time  to  lose. 
Let    this    world    go,    arrange    for    the    next    one. 
Handily  situated,  at  your  very  elbow,  is  opportunity 
for  this.     You  turn  and  worship  the  image  of  Maha 
Kal,  the   Great  Fate,  and   happiness   in   the   life   to 
come  is  secured.     If  there   is  breath  in  your  body 
yet,  you  should  now  make  an  effort  to  get  a  further 
lease    of    the   present    life.     You    have   a   chance. 


182  Following  the  Equator 

There  is  a  chance  for  everything  in  this  admirably 
stocked  and  wonderfully  systemized  Spiritual  and 
Temporal  Army  and  Navy  Store.  You  must  get 
yourself  carried  to  the 

7.  Well  of  Long  Life.    This  is  within  the  precincts 
of  the  mouldering  and  venerable  Briddhkal  Temple, 
which  is  one  of  the  oldest  in  Benares.     You  pass  in 
by   a  stone   image  of  the   monkey  god,  Hanuman, 
and   there,  among  the   ruined  court-yards,  you  will 
find  a  shallow  pool   of  stagnant  sewage.     It  smells 
like  the  best  limburger  cheese,  and  is  filthy  with  the 
washings    of    rotting    lepers,    but   that   is   nothing, 
bathe  in  it;   bathe  in  it  gratefully  and  worshipfully, 
for  this   is   the   Fountain   of  Youth;   these   are   the 
Waters   of  Long  Life.     Your  gray  hairs  will  disap 
pear,  and   with  them  your  wrinkles  and  your   rheu 
matism,  the   burdens   of  care   and   the  weariness  of 
age,  and   you   will   come   out  young,   fresh,  elastic, 
and  full  of  eagerness  for  the  new  race  of  life.     Now 
will   come   flooding  upon  you   the   manifold  desires 
that  haunt  the  dear  dreams  of  the  morning  of  life. 
You  will  go  whither  you  will  find 

8.  Fulfillment  of  Desire.     To  wit,  to   the   Kame- 
shwar  Temple,  sacred  to   Shiva  as  the  Lord  of  De 
sires.     Arrange  for  yours   there.     And  if  you  like 
to  look  at  idols  among  the  pack  and  jam  of  temples, 
there  you  will  find  enough  to  stock  a  museum.    You 
will   begin   to   commit  sins   now  with   a  fresh,  new 
vivacity;   therefore,  it  will  be  well  to  go  frequently 
to  a  place  where  you  can  get 


Following  the  Equator  183 

9.  Temporary  Cleansing  from  Sin.  To  wit,  to 
the  Well  of  the  Earring.  You  must  approach  this 
with  the  profoundest  reverence,  for  it  is  unutterably 
sacred.  It  is,  indeed,  the  most  sacred  place  in 
Benares,  the  very  Holy  of  Holies,  in  the  estimation 
of  the  people.  It  is  a  railed  tank,  with  stone  stair 
ways  leading  down  to  the  water.  The  water  is  not 
clean.  Of  course  it  could  not  be,  for  people  are 
always  bathing  in  it.  As  long  as  you  choose  to 
stand  and  look,  you  will  see  the  files  of  sinners 
descending  and  ascending  —  descending  soiled  with 
sin,  ascending  purged  from  it.  "The  liar,  the 
thief,  the  murderer,  and  the  adulterer  may  here 
wash  and  be  clean,"  says  the  Rev.  Mr.  Parker,  in 
his  book.  Very  well.  I  know  Mr.  Parker,  and  I 
believe  it ;  but  if  anybody  else  had  said  it,  I  should 
consider  him  a  person  who  had  better  go  down  in 
the  tank  and  take  another  wash.  The  god  Vishnu 
dug  this  tank.  He  had  nothing  to  dig  with  but  his 
11  discus."  I  do  not  know  what  a  discus  is,  but  I 
know  it  is  a  poor  thing  to  dig  tanks  with,  because, 
by  the  time  this  one  was  finished,  it  was  full  of 
sweat  —  Vishnu's  sweat.  He  constructed  the  site 
that  Benares  stands  on,  and  afterward  built  the  globe 
around  it,  and  thought  nothing  of  it,  yet  sweated 
like  that  over  a  little  thing  like  this  tank.  One  of 
these  statements  is  doubtful.  I  do  not  know  which 
one  it  is,  but  I  think  it  difficult  not  to  believe  that  a 
god  who  could  build  a  world  around  Benares  would 
not  be  intelligent  enough  to  build  it  around  the  tank 


184  Following  the  Equator 

too,  and  not  have  to  dig  it.  Youth,  long  life, 
temporary  purification  from  sin,  salvation  through 
propitiation  of  the  Great  Fate  —  these  are  all  good. 
But  you  must  do  something  more.  You  must 

10.  Make    Salvation    Sure.     There    are    several 
ways.     To  get  drowned   in   the   Ganges  is  one,  but 
that  is   not  pleasant.     To  die  within  the  limits   of 
Benares  is  another;   but  that  is  a  risky  one,  because 
you   might  be   out  of  town  when  your  time   came. 
The   best  one  of  all   is   the   Pilgrimage  Around  the 
City.     You  must  walk;   also,  you  must  go  barefoot. 
The   tramp  is  forty-four  miles,  for  the   road  winds 
out  into  the  country  a  piece,  and  you  will  be  march 
ing  five  or  six  days.     But  you   will   have   plenty  of 
company.     You  will   move  with   throngs  and  hosts 
of  happy  pilgrims  whose  radiant  costumes  will  make 
the   spectacle  beautiful   and   whose   glad   songs  and 
holy  paeans  of  triumph  will  banish  your  fatigues  and 
cheer   your  spirit;    and   at  intervals   there   will   be 
temples  where  you  may  sleep  and  be  refreshed  with 
food.     The   pilgrimage   completed,    you   have    pur 
chased  salvation,  and  paid  for  it.     But  you  may  not 
get  it  unless  you 

1 1 .  Get    Your    Redemption  Recorded.     You    can 
get   this   done   at  the  Sakhi  Binayak  Temple,  and  it 
is  best  to  do  it,  for  otherwise  you  might  not  be  able 
to  prove  that  you  had  made  the  pilgrimage  in  case 
the   matter   should   some  day  come  to  be  disputed. 
That  temple  is  in  a  lane  back  of  the  Cow  Temple. 
Over  the  door  is  a  red  image  of  Ganesh  of  the  ele- 


Following  the  Equator  185 

phant  head,  son  and  heir  of  Shiva,  and  Prince  of 
Wales  to  the  Theological  Monarchy,  so  to  speak. 
Within  is  a  god  whose  office  it  is  to  record  your 
pilgrimage  and  be  responsible  for  you.  You  will 
not  see  him,  but  you  will  see  a  Brahmin  who  will 
attend  to  the  matter  and  take  the  money.  If  he 
should  forget  to  collect  the  money,  you  can  remind 
him.  He  knows  that  your  salvation  is  now  secure, 
but  of  course  you  would  like  to  know  it  yourself. 
You  have  nothing  to  do  but  go  and  pray,  and  pay 
at  the 

1 2 .  Well  of  the  Knowledge  of  Salvation.  It  is 
close  to  the  Golden  Temple.  There  you  will  see, 
sculptured  out  of  a  single  piece  of  black  marble,  a 
bull  which  is  much  larger  than  any  living  bull  you 
have  ever  seen,  and  yet  is  not  a  good  likeness  after 
all.  And  there  also  you  will  see  a  very  uncommon 
thing  —  an  image  of  Shiva.  You  have  seen  his 
lingam  fifty  thousand  times  already,  but  this  is  Shiva 
himself,  and  said  to  be  a  good  likeness.  It  has 
three  eyes.  He  is  the  only  god  in  the  firm  that  has 
three.  '  The  well  is  covered  by  a  fine  canopy  of 
stone  supported  by  forty  pillars,"  and  around  it  you 
will  find  what  you  have  already  seen  at  almost  every 
shrine  you  have  visited  in  Benares,  a  mob  of  devout 
and  eager  pilgrims.  The  sacred  water  is  being 
ladled  out  to  them;  with  it  comes  to  them  the 
knowledge,  clear,  thrilling,  absolute,  that  they  are 
saved ;  and  you  can  see  by  their  faces  that  there  is 
one  happiness  in  this  world  which  is  supreme,  and 


,    186  Following  the  Equator 

to  which  no  other  joy  is  comparable.  You  receive 
your  water,  you  make  your  deposit,  and  now  what 
more  would  you  have?  Gold,  diamonds,  power, 
fame?  All  in  a  single  moment  these  things  have 
withered  to  dirt,  dust,  ashes.  The  world  has  noth 
ing  to  give  you  now.  For  you  it  is  bankrupt. 

I  do  not  claim  that  the  pilgrims  do  their  acts  of 
worship  in  the  order  and  sequence  above  charted 
out  in  this  Itinerary  of  mine,  but  I  think  logic  sug 
gests  that  they  ought  to  do  so.  Instead  of  a  helter- 
skelter  worship,  we  then  have  a  definite  starting- 
place,  and  a  march  which  carries  the  pilgrim  steadily 
forward  by  reasoned  and  logical  progression  to  a 
definite  goal.  Thus,  his  Ganges  bath  in  the  early 
morning  gives  him  an  appetite ;  he  kisses  the  cow- 
tails,  and  that  removes  it.  It  is  now  business  hours, 
and  longings  for  material  prosperity  rise  in  his  mind, 
and  he  goes  and  pours  water  over  Shiva's  symbol ; 
this  insures  the  prosperity,  but  also  brings  on  a 
rain,  which  gives  him  a  fever.  Then  he  drinks  the 
sewage  at  the  Kedar  Ghat  to  cure  the  fever;  it  cures 
the  fever  but  gives  him  the  smallpox.  He  wishes 
to  know  how  it  is  going  to  turn  out ;  he  goes  to  the 
Dandpan  Temple  and  looks  down  the  well.  A 
clouded  sun  shows  him  that  death  is  near.  Logically, 
his  best  course  for  the  present,  since  he  cannot  tell 
at  what  moment  he  may  die,  is  to  secure  a  happy 
hereafter;  this  he  does,  through  the  agency  of  the 
Great  Fate.  He  is  safe,  now,  for  heaven;  his  next 
move  will  naturally  be  to  keep  out  of  it  as  long  as 


Following  the  Equator  187 

he  can.  Therefore  he  goes  to  the  Briddhkal  Temple 
and  secures  Youth  and  long  life  by  bathing  in  a 
puddle  of  leper-pus  which  would  kill  a  microbe. 
Logically,  Youth  has  re-equipped  him  for  sin  and 
with  the  disposition  to  commit  it;  he  will  naturally 
go  to  the  fane  which  is  consecrated  to  the  Fulfill 
ment  of  Desires,  and  make  arrangements.  Logic 
ally,  he  will  now  go  to  the  well  of  the  Earring  from 
time  to  time  to  unload  and  freshen  up  for  further 
banned  enjoyments.  But  first  and  last  and  all  the 
time  he  is  human,  and  therefore  in  his  reflective 
intervals  he  will  always  be  speculating  in  "  futures." 
He  will  make  the  Great  Pilgrimage  around  the  city 
and  so  make  his  salvation  absolutely  sure  ;  he  will 
also  have  record  made  of  it,  so  that  it  may  remain 
absolutely  sure  and  not  be  forgotten  or  repudiated 
in  the  confusion  of  the  Final  Settlement.  Logically, 
also,  he  will  wish  to  have  satisfying  and  tranquiliz- 
ing  personal  knowledge  that  that  salvation  is  secure  ; 
therefore  he  goes  to  the  Well  of  the  Knowledge  of 
Salvation,  adds  that  completing  detail,  and  then 
goes  about  his  affairs  serene  and  content;  serene 
and  content,  for  he  is  now  royally  endowed  with  an 
advantage  which  no  religion  in  this  world  could  give 
him  but  his  own  ;  for  henceforth  he  may  commit  as 
many  million  sins  as  he  wants  to  and  nothing  can 
come  of  it. 

Thus  the  system,  properly  and  logically  ordered, 
is  neat,  compact,  clearly  defined,  and  covers  the 
whole  ground.  I  desire  to  recommend  it  to  such  as 


188  Following  the  Equator 

find  the  other  systems  too  difficult,  exacting,  and 
irksome  for  the  uses  of  this  fretful  brief  life  of  ours. 

However,  let  me  not  deceive  any  one.  My 
Itinerary  lacks  a  detail.  I  must  put  it  in.  The 
truth  is,  that  after  the  pilgrim  has  faithfully  followed 
the  requirements  of  the  Itinerary  through  to  the  end 
and  has  secured  his  salvation  and  also  the  personal 
knowledge  of  that  fact,  there  is  still  an  accident 
possible  to  him  which  can  annul  the  whole  thing. 
If  he  should  ever  cross  to  the  other  side  of  the 
Ganges  and  get  caught  out  and  die  there  he  would 
at  once  come  to  life  again  in  the  form  of  an  ass. 
Think  of  that,  after  all  this  trouble  and  expense. 
You  see  how  capricious  and  uncertain  salvation  is 
there.  The  Hindoo  has  a  childish  and  unreasoning 
aversion  to  being  turned  into  an  ass.  It  is  hard  to 
tell  why.  One  could  properly  expect  an  ass  to  have 
an  aversion  to  being  turned  into  a  Hindoo.  One 
could  understand  that  he  could  lose  dignity  by  it; 
also  self-respect,  and  nine-tenths  of  his  intelligence. 
But  the  Hindoo  changed  into  an  ass  wouldn't  lose 
anything,  unless  you  count  his  religion.  And  he 
would  gain  much  —  release  from  his  slavery  to  two 
million  gods  and  twenty  million  priests,  fakeers,  holy 
mendicants,  and  other  sacred  bacilli ;  he  would 
escape  the  Hindoo  hell;  he  would  also  escape  the 
Hindoo  heaven.  These  are  advantages  which  the 
Hindoo  ought  to  consider;  then  he  would  go  over 
and  die  on  the  other  side. 

Benares  is  a  religious  Vesuvius.     In  its  bowels  the 


Following  the  Equator  189 

theological  forces  have  been  heaving  and  tossing, 
rumbling,  thundering  and  quaking,  boiling,  and 
weltering  and  flaming  and  smoking  for  ages.  But 
a  little  group  of  missionaries  have  taken  post  at  its 
base,  and  they  have  hopes.  There  are  the  Baptist 
Missionary  Society,  the  Church  Missionary  Society, 
the  London  Missionary  Society,  the  Wesleyan  Mis 
sionary  Society,  and  the  Zenana  Bible  and  Medical 
Mission.  They  have  schools,  and  the  principal 
work  seems  to  be  among  the  children.  And  no 
doubt  that  part  of  the  work  prospers  best,  for 
grown  people  everywhere  are  always  likely  to  cling 
to  the  religion  they  were  brought  up  in. 

13** 


.  -7 


CHAPTER   XVI. 

Wrinkles  should  merely  indicate  where  smiles  have  been. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar, 

IN  one  of  those  Benares  temples  we  saw  a  devotee 
working  for  salvation  in  a  curious  way.  He  had 
a  huge  wad  of  clay  beside  him  and  was  making  it 
up  into  little  wee  gods  no  bigger  than  carpet  tacks. 
He  stuck  a  grain  of  rice  into  each — to  represent 
the  lingam,  I  think.  He  turned  them  out  nimbly, 
for  he  had  had  long  practice  and  had  acquired  great 
facility.  Every  day  he  made  2,000  gods,  then 
threw  them  into  the  holy  Ganges.  This  act  of 
homage  brought  him  the  profound  homage  of  the 
pious — also  their  coppers.  He  had  a  sure  living 
here,  and  was  earning  a  high  place  in  the  hereafter. 
The  Ganges  front  is  the  supreme  show-place  of 
Benares.  Its  tall  bluffs  are  solidly  caked  from  water 
to  summit,  along  a  stretch  of  three  miles,  with  a 
splendid  jumble  of  massive  and  picturesque  masonry, 
a  bewildering  and  beautiful  confusion  of  stone  plat 
forms,  temples,  stair-flights,  rich  and  stately  palaces 
— nowhere  a  break,  nowhere  a  glimpse  of  the  bluff 
itself  ;  all  the  long  face  of  it  is  compactly  walled 

from  sight   by  this  crammed    perspective  of   plat- 

(190) 


Following  the  Equator  191 

forms,  soaring  stairways,  sculptured  temples,  majes 
tic  palaces,  softening  away  into  the  distances;  and 
there  is  movement,  motion,  human  life  everywhere, 
and  brilliantly  costumed  —  streaming  in  rainbows  up 
and  down  the  lofty  stairways,  and  massed  in  meta 
phorical  flower-gardens  on  the  miles  of  great  plat 
forms  at  the  river's  edge. 

All  this  masonry,  all  this  architecture  represents 
piety.  The  palaces  were  built  by  native  princes 
whose  homes,  as  a  rule,  are  far  from  Benares,  but 
who  go  there  from  time  to  time  to  refresh  their  souls 
with  the  sight  and  touch  of  the  Ganges,  the  river  of 
their  idolatry.  The  stairways  are  records  of  acts  of 
piety ;  the  crowd  of  costly  little  temples  are  tokens 
of  money  spent  by  rich  men  for  present  credit  and 
hope  of  future  reward.  Apparently,  the  rich  Chris 
tian  who  spends  large  sums  upon  his  religion  is  con 
spicuous  with  us,  by  his  rarity,  but  the  rich  Hindoo 
who  doesn't  spend  large  sums  upon  his  religion  is 
seemingly  non-existent.  With  us  the  poor  spend 
money  on  their  religion,  but  they  keep  back  some 
to  live  on.  Apparently,  in  India,  the  poor  bankrupt 
themselves  daily  for  their  religion.  The  rich  Hindoo 
can  afford  his  pious  outlays ;  he  gets  much  glory  for 
his  spendings,  yet  keeps  back  a  sufficiency  of  his 
income  for  temporal  purposes;  but  the  poor  Hindoo 
is  entitled  to  compassion,  for  his  spendings  keep  him 
poor,  yet  get  him  no  glory. 

We  made  the  usual  trip  up  and  down  the  river, 
seated  in  chairs  under  an  awning  on  the  deck  of  the 


192  Following  the  Equator 

usual  commodious  hand-propelled  ark;  made  it  two 
or  three  times,  and  could  have  made  it  with  in 
creasing  interest  and  enjoyment  many  times  more ; 
for,  of  course,  the  palaces  and  temples  would  grow 
more  and  more  beautiful  every  time  one  saw  them, 
for  that  happens  with  all  such  things;  also,  I  think 
one  would  not  get  tired  of  the  bathers,  nor  their 
costumes,  nor  of  their  ingenuities  in  getting  out  of 
them  and  into  them  again  without  exposing  too 
much  bronze,  nor  of  their  devotional  gesticulations 
and  absorbed  bead-tellings. 

But  I  should  get  tired  of  seeing  them  wash  their 
mouths  with  that  dreadful  water  and  drink  it.  In 
fact,  I  did  get  tired  of  it,  and  very  early,  too.  At 
one  place  where  we  halted  for  a  while,  the  foul  gush 
from  a  sewer  was  making  the  water  turbid  and 
murky  all  around,  and  there  was  a  random  corpse 
slopping  around  in  it  that  had  floated  down  from  up 
country.  Ten  steps  below  that  place  stood  a  crowd 
of  men,  women,  and  comely  young  maidens  waist 
deep  in  the  water  —  and  they  were  scooping  it  up  in 
their  hands  and  drinking  it.  Faith  can  certainly  do 
wonders,  and  this  is  an  instance  of  it.  Those  people 
were  not  drinking  that  fearful  stuff  to  assuage  thirst, 
but  in  order  to  purify  their  souls  and  the  interior  of 
their  bodies.  According  to  their  creed,  the  Ganges 
water  makes  everything  pure  that  it  touches  —  in 
stantly  and  utterly  pure.  The  sewer  water  was  not 
an  offense  to  them,  the  corpse  did  not  revolt  them; 
the  sacred  water  had  touched  both,  and  both  were 


Following  the  Equator  193 

now  snow-pure,  and  could  defile  no  one.  The 
memory  of  that  sight  will  always  stay  by  me ;  but 
not  by  request. 

A  word  further  concerning  the  nasty  but  all- 
purifying  Ganges  water.  When  we  went  to  Agra, 
by  and  by,  we  happened  there  just  in  time  to  be  in 
at  the  birth  of  a  marvel  —  a  memorable  scientific 
discovery  —  the  discovery  that  in  certain  ways  the 
foul  and  derided  Ganges  water  is  the  most  puissant 
purifier  in  the  world  !  This  curious  fact,  as  I  have 
said,  had  just  been  added  to  the  treasury  of  modern 
science.  It  had  long  been  noted  as  a  strange  thing 
that  while  Benares  is  often  afflicted  with  the  cholera  »/ 
she  does  not  spread  it  beyond  her  borders.  This 
could  not  be  accounted  for.  Mr.  Henkin,  the 
scientist  in  the  employ  of  the  government  of  Agra, 
concluded  to  examine  the  water.  He  went  to 
Benares  and  made  his  tests.  He  got  water  at  the 
mouths  of  the  sewers  where  they  empty  into  the 
river  at  the  bathing  ghats ;  a  cubic  centimeter  of  it 
contained  millions  of  germs ;  at  the  end  of  six  hours 
they  were  all  dead.  He  caught  a  floating  corpse, 
towed  it  to  the  shore,  and  from  beside  it  he  dipped 
up  water  that  was  swarming  with  cholera  germs ;  at 
the  end  of  six  hours  they  were  all  dead.  He  added 
swarm  after  swarm  of  cholera  germs  to  this  water ; 
within  the  six  hours  they  always  died,  to  the  last 
sample.  Repeatedly,  he  took  pure  well  water  which 
was  barren  of  animal  life,  and  put  into  it  a  few 
cholera  germs ;  they  always  began  to  propagate  at 
18.. 


194  Following  the  Equator 

once,  and  always  within  six  hours  they  swarmed  — 
and  were  numberable  by  millions  upon  millions. 

For  ages  and  ages  the  Hindoos  have  had  absolute 
faith  that  the  water  of  the  Ganges  was  absolutely 
pure,  could  not  be  defiled  by  any  contact  whatsoever, 
and  infallibly  made  pure  and  clean  whatsoever  thing 
touched  it.  They  still  believe  it,  and  that  is  why 
they  bathe  in  it  and  drink  it,  caring  nothing  for  its 
seeming  filthiness  and  the  floating  corpses.  The 
Hindoos  have  been  laughed  at,  these  many  genera 
tions,  but  the  laughter  will  need  to  modify  itself  a 
little  from  now  on.  How  did  they  find  out  the 
water's  secret  in  those  ancient  ages?  Had  they 
germ-scientists  then?  We  do  not  know.  We  only 
know  that  they  had  a  civilization  long  before  we 
emerged  from  savagery.  But  to  return  to  where  I 
was  before;  I  was  about  to  speak  of  the  burning- 
ghat. 

They  do  not  burn  fakeers  —  those  revered  mendi 
cants.  They  are  so  holy  that  they  can  get  to  their 
place  without  that  sacrament,  provided  they  be  con 
signed  to  the  consecrating  river.  We  saw  one  car 
ried  to  mid-stream  and  thrown  overboard.  He  was 
sandwiched  between  two  great  slabs  of  stone. 

We  lay  off  the  cremation-ghat  half  an  hour  and 
saw  nine  corpses  burned.  I  should  not  wish  to  see 
any  more  of  it,  unless  I  might  select  the  parties. 
The  mourners  follow  the  bier  through  the  town  and 
down  to  the  ghat ;  then  the  bier-bearers  deliver  the 
body  to  some  low-caste  natives  —  Doms  —  and  the 


Following  the  Equator  195 

mourners  turn  about  and  go  back  home.  I  heard 
no  crying  and  saw  no  tears,  there  was  no  ceremony 
of  parting.  Apparently,  these  expressions  of  grief 
and  affection  are  reserved  for  the  privacy  of  ^the 
home.  The  dead  women  came  draped  in  red,  the 
men  in  white.  They  are  laid  in  the  water  at  the 
river's  edge  while  the  pyre  is  being  prepared. 

The  first  subject  was  a  man.  When  the  Doms 
unswathed  him  to  wash  him,  he  proved  to  be  a 
sturdily  built,  well-nourished,  and  handsome  old 
gentleman,  with  not  a  sign  about  him  to  suggest 
that  he  had  ever  been  ill.  Dry  wood  was  brought 
and  built  up  into  a  loose  pile ;  the  corpse  was  laid 
upon  it  and  covered  over  with  fuel.  Then  a  naked 
holy  man  who  was  sitting  on  high  ground  a  little 
distance  away  began  to  talk  and  shout  with  great 
energy,  and  he  kept  up  this  noise  right  along.  It 
may  have  been  the  funeral  sermon,  and  probably 
was.  I  forgot  to  say  that  one  of  the  mourners  re 
mained  behind  when  the  others  went  away.  This 
was  the  dead  man's  son,  a  boy  of  ten  or  twelve, 
brown  and  handsome,  grave  and  self-possessed,  and 
clothed  in  flowing  white.  He  was  there  to  burn  his 
father.  He  was  given  a  torch,  and  while  he  slowly 
walked  seven  times  around  the  pyre  the  naked  black 
man  on  the  high  ground  poured  out  his  sermon  more 
clamorously  than  ever.  The  seventh  circuit  com 
pleted,  the  boy  applied  the  torch  at  his  father's 
head,  then  at  his  feet;  the  flames  sprang  briskly  up 
with  a  sharp  crackling  noise,  and  the  lad  went  away. 


196  Following  the  Equator 

Hindoos  do  not  want  daughters,  because  their  wed 
dings  make  such  a  ruinous  expense ;  but  they  want 
sons,  so  that  at  death  they  may  have  honorable  exit 
from  the  world ;  and  there  is  no  honor  equal  to  the 
honor  of  having  one's  pyre  lighted  by  one's  son. 
The  father  who  dies  sonless  is  in  a  grievous  situa 
tion  indeed,  and  is  pitied.  Life  being  uncertain,  the 
Hindoo  marries  while  he  is  still  a  boy,  in  the  hope 
that  he  will  have  a  son  ready  when  the  day  of  his 
need  shall  come.  But  if  he  have  no  son,  he  will 
adopt  one.  This  answers  every  purpose. 

Meantime,  the  corpse  is  burning,  also  several 
others.  It  is  a  dismal  business.  The  stokers  did 
not  sit  down  in  idleness,  but  moved  briskly  about, 
punching  up  the  fires  with  long  poles,  and  now  and 
then  adding  fuel.  Sometimes  they  hoisted  the  half 
of  a  skeleton  into  the  air,  then  slammed  it  down 
and  beat  it  with  the  pole,  breaking  it  up  so  that  it 
would  burn  better.  They  hoisted  skulls  up  in  the 
same  way  and  banged  and  battered  them.  The 
sight  was  hard  to  bear ;  it  would  have  been  harder 
if  the  mourners  had  stayed  to  witness  it.  I  had  but 
a  moderate  desire  to  see  a  cremation,  so  it  was  soon 
satisfied.  For  sanitary  reasons  it  would  be  well  if 
cremation  were  universal;  but  this  form  is  revolt 
ing,  and  not  to  be  recommended. 

The  fire  used  is  sacred,  of  course  —  for  there  is 
money  in  it.  Ordinary  fire  is  forbidden ;  there  is 
no  money  in  it.  I  was  told  that  this  sacred  fire  is 
all  furnished  by  one  person,  and  that  he  has  a 


Following  the  Equator  197 

monopoly  of  it  and  charges  a  good  price  for  it. 
Sometimes  a  rich  mourner  pays  a  thousand  rupees 
for  it.  To  get  to  paradise  from  India  is  an  expen 
sive  thing.  Every  detail  connected  with  the  matter 
costs  something,  and  helps  to  fatten  a  priest.  I 
suppose  it  is  quite  safe  to  conclude  that  that  fire 
bug  is  in  holy  orders. 

Close  to  the  cremation-ground  stand  a  few  time- 
worn  stones  which  are  remembrances  of  the  Suttee. 
Each  has  a  rough  carving  upon  it,  representing  a  man 
and  a  woman  standing  or  walking  hand  in  hand,  and 
marks  the  spot  where  a  widow  went  to  her  death  by 
fire  in  the  days  when  the  suttee  flourished.  Mr. 
Parker  said  that  widows  would  burn  themselves  now 
if  the  government  would  allow  it.  The  family  that 
can  point  to  one  of  these  little  memorials  and  say : 
"  She  who  burned  herself  there  was  an  ancestress  of 
ours,"  is  envied. 

It  is  a  curious  people.  With  them,  all  life  seems 
to  be  sacred  except  human  life.  Even  the  life  of 
vermin  is  sacred,  and  must  not  be  taken.  The  good 
Jain  wipes  off  a  seat  before  using  it,  lest  he  cause 
the  death  of  some  valueless  insect  by  sitting  down 
on  it.  It  grieves  him  to  have  to  drink  water,  be 
cause  the  provisions  in  his  stomach  may  not  agree 
with  the  microbes.  Yet  India  invented  Thuggery 
and  the  Suttee.  India  is  a  hard  country  to  under 
stand. 

We  went  to  the  temple  of  the  Thug  goddess, 
Bhowanee,  or  Kali,  or  Durga.  She  has  these  names 


198  Following  the  Equator 

and  others.  She  is  the  only  god  to  whom  living 
sacrifices  are  made.  Goats  are  sacrificed  to  her. 
Monkeys  would  be  cheaper.  There  are  plenty  of 
them  about  the  place.  Being  sacred,  they  make 
themselves  very  free,  and  scramble  around  wherever 
they  please.  The  temple  and  its  porch  are  beauti 
fully  carved,  but  this  is  not  the  case  with  the  idol. 
Bhowanee  is  not  pleasant  to  look  at.  She  has  a 
silver  face,  and  tongue  painted  a  deep  red.  She 
wears  a  necklace  of  skulls. 

In  fact,  none  of  the  idols  in  Benares  are  hand 
some  or  attractive.  And  what  a  swarm  of  them 
there  is !  The  town  is  a  vast  museum  of  idols  — • 
and  all  of  them  crude,  misshapen,  and  ugly.  They 
flock  through  one's  dreams  at  night,  a  wild  mob  of 
nightmares.  When  you  get  tired  of  them  in  the 
temples  and  take  a  trip  on  the  river,  you  find  idol 
giants,  flashily  painted,  stretched  out  side  by  side 
on  the  shore.  And  apparently  wherever  there  is 
room  for  one  more  lingam,  a  lingam  is  there.  If 
Vishnu  had  foreseen  what  his  town  was  going  to  be, 
he  would  have  called  it  Idolville  or  Lingamburg. 

The  most  conspicuous  feature  of  Benares  is  the 
pair  of  slender  white  minarets  which  tower  like 
masts  from  the  great  Mosque  of  Aurangzeb.  They 
seem  to  be  always  in  sight,  from  everywhere,  those 
airy,  graceful,  inspiring  things.  But  masts  is  not 
the  right  word,  for  masts  have  a  perceptible  taper, 
while  these  minarets  have  not.  They  are  142  feet 
high,  and  only  8^2  feet  in  diameter  at  the  base,  and 


Following  the  Equator  199 

7%  at  the  summit  —  scarcely  any  taper  at  all 
These  are  the  proportions  of  a  candle ;  and  fair  and 
fairy-like  candles  these  are.  Will  be,  anyway,  some 
day,  when  the  Christians  inherit  them  and  top  them 
with  the  electric  light.  There  is  a  great  view  from 
up  there  —  a  wonderful  view.  A  large  gray  monkey 
was  part  of  it,  and  damaged  it.  A  monkey  has  no 
judgment.  This  one  was  skipping  about  the  upper 
great  heights  of  the  mosque  —  skipping  across 
empty  yawning  intervals  which  were  almost  too 
wide  for  him,  arid  which  he  only  just  barely  cleared, 
each  time,  by  the  skin  of  his  teeth.  He  got  me  so 
nervous  that  I  couldn't  look  at  the  view.  I  couldn't 
look  at  anything  but  him.  Every  time  he  went  sail 
ing  over  one  of  those  abysses  my  breath  stood  still, 
and  when  he  grabbed  for  the  perch  he  was  going 
for,  I  grabbed  too,  in  sympathy,  And  he  was  per 
fectly  indifferent,  perfectly  unconcerned,  and  I  did 
all  the  panting  myself.  He  came  within  an  ace  of 
losing  his  life  a  dozen  times,  and  I  was  so  troubled 
about  him  that  I  would  have  shot  him  if  I  had  had 
anything  to  do  it  with.  But  I  strongly  recommend 
the  view.  There  is  more  monkey  than  view,  and 
there  is  always  going  to  be  more  monkey  while  that 
idiot  survives,  but  what  view  you  get  is  superb.  All 
Benares,  the  river,  and  the  region  round  about  are 
spread  before  you.  Take  a  gun,  and  look  at  the 
view. 

The   next  thing  I   saw  was   more   reposeful.     It 
was  a  new  kind  of  art.     It  was  a  picture  painted  on 


Following  the  Equator 

water.  It  was  done  by  a  native.  He  sprinkled  fine 
dust  of  various  colors  on  the  still  surface  of  a  basin 
of  water,  and  out  of  these  sprinklings  a  dainty  and 
pretty  picture  gradually  grew,  a  picture  which  a 
breath  could  destroy.  Somehow  it  was  impressive, 
after  so  much  browsing  among  massive  and  battered 
and  decaying  fanes  that  rest  upon  ruins,  and  those 
ruins  upon  still  other  ruins,  and  those  upon  still 
others  again.  It  was  a  sermon,  an  allegory,  a  sym 
bol  of  Instability.  Those  creations  in  stone  were 
only  a  kind  of  water  pictures,  after  all. 

A  prominent  episode  in  the  Indian  career  of 
Warren  Hastings  had  Benares  for  its  theater. 
Wherever  that  extraordinary  man  set  his  foot,  he 
left  his  mark.  He  came  to  Benares  in  1781  to  col 
lect  a  fine  of  .£500,000  which  he  had  levied  upon  its 
Rajah,  Cieit  Singh,  on  behalf  of  the  East  India 
Company.  Hastings  was  a  long  way  from  home 
and  help.  There  were,  probably,  not  a  dozen  Eng 
lishmen  within  reach ;  the  Rajah  was  in  his  fort  with 
his  myriads  around  him.  But  no  matter.  From 
his  little  camp  in  a  neighboring  garden,  Hastings 
sent  a  party  to  arrest  the  sovereign.  He  sent  on 
this  daring  mission  a  couple  of  hundred  native 
soldiers  —  sepoys  —  under  command  of  three  young 
English  lieutenants.  The  Rajah  submitted  without 
a  word.  The  incident  lights  up  the  Indian  situation 
electrically,  and  gives  one  a  vivid  sense  of  the  strides 
which  the  English  had  made  and  the  mastership 
they  had  acquired  in  the  land  since  the  date  of 


Following  the  Equator  201 

dive's  great  victory,  In  a  quarter  of  a  century, 
from  being  nobodies,  and  feared  by  none,  they 
were  become  confessed  lords  and  masters,  feared  by 
all,  sovereigns  included,  and  served  by  all,  sovereigns 
included.  It  makes  the  fairy  tales  sound  true.  The 
English  had  not  been  afraid  to  enlist  native  soldiers 
to  fight  against  their  own  people  and  keep  them 
obedient.  And  now  Hastings  was  not  afraid  to 
come  away  out  to  this  remote  place  with  a  handful 
of  such  soldiers  and  send  them  to  arrest  a  native 
sovereign. 

The  lieutenants  imprisoned  the  Rajah  in  his  own 
fort.  It  was  beautiful,  the  pluckiness  of  it,  the 
impudence  of  it.  The  arrest  enraged  the  Rajah's 
people,  and  all  Benares  came  storming  about  the 
place  and  threatening  vengeance.  And  yet,  but  for 
an  accident,  nothing  important  would  have  resulted, 
perhaps.  The  mob  found  out  a  most  strange  thing, 
an  almost  incredible  thing  —  that  this  handful  of 
soldiers  had  come  on  this  hardy  errand  with  empty 
guns  and  no  ammunition.  This  has  been  attributed  to 
thoughtlessness,  but  it  could  hardly  have  been  that, 
for  in  such  large  emergencies  as  this,  intelligent  people 
do  think.  It  must  have  been  indifference,  an  over- 
confidence  born  of  the  proved  submissiveness  of  the 
native  character,  when  confronted  by  even  one  or 
two  stern  Britons  in  their  war  paint.  But,  however 
that  may  be,  it  was  a  fatal  discovery  that  the  mob 
had  made.  They  were  full  of  courage  now,  and 
they  broke  into  the  fort  and  massacred  the  helplesa 


202  Following  the  Equator 

soldiers  and  their  officers.  Hastings  escaped  from 
Benares  by  night  and  got  safely  away,  leaving  the 
principality  in  a  state  of  wild  insurrection :  but  he 
was  back  again  within  the  month,  and  quieted  it 
down  in  his  prompt  and  virile  way,  and  took  the 
Rajah's  throne  away  from  him  and  gave  it  to 
another  man.  He  was  a  capable  kind  of  person 
was  Warren  Hastings.  This  was  the  only  time  he 
was  ever  out  of  ammunition.  Some  of  his  acts  have 
left  stains  upon  his  name  which  can  never  be  washed 
away,  but  he  saved  to  England  the  Indian  Empire, 
and  that  was  the  best  service  that  was  ever  done  to 
the  Indians  themselves,  those  wretched  heirs  of  a 
hundred  centuries  of  pitiless  oppression  and  abuse. 

'      "1,      ..-':•• 

ft— 


CHAPTER    XVII. 

True  irreverence  is  disrespect  for  another  man's  god. 

—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

IT  was  in  Benares  that  I  saw  another  living  god. 
That  makes  two.     I  believe  I  have  seen  most  of 
the   greater  and   lesser  wonders  of  the  world,  but  I 
do  not  remember  that  any  of  them  interested  me  so 
overwhelmingly  as  did  that  pair  of  gods. 

When  I  try  to  account  for  this  effect  I  find  no 
difficulty  about  it.  I  find  that,  as  a  rule,  when  a 
thing  is  a  wonder  to  us  it  is  not  because  of  what  we 
see  in  it,  but  because  of  what  others  have  seen  in  it. 
We  get  almost  all  our  wonders  at  second  hand.  We 
are  eager  to  see  any  celebrated  thing  —  and  we 
never  fail  of  our  reward ;  just  the  deep  privilege  of 
gazing  upon  an  object  which  has  stirred  the  enthu 
siasm  or  evoked  the  reverence  or  affection  or  admira 
tion  of  multitudes  of  our  race  is  a  thing  which  we 
value ;  we  are  profoundly  glad  that  we  have  seen  it, 
we  are  permanently  enriched  from  having  seen  it, 
we  would  not  part  with  the  memory  of  that  experi 
ence  for  a  great  price.  And  yet  that  very  spectacle 
may  be  the  Taj.  You  cannot  keep  your  enthusiasms 

(203) 


204  Following  the  Equator 

down,  you  cannot  keep  your  emotions  within  bounds 
when  that  soaring  bubble  of  marble  breaks  upon 
your  view.  But  these  are  not  your  enthusiasms  and 
emotions  —  they  are  the  accumulated  emotions  and 
enthusiasms  of  a  thousand  fervid  writers,  who  have 
been  slowly  and  steadily  storing  them  up  in  your 
heart  day  by  day  and  year  by  year  all  your  life ; 
and  now  they  burst  out  in  a  flood  and  overwhelm 
you ;  and  you  could  not  be  a  whit  happier  if  they 
were  your  very  own.  By  and  by  you  sober  down, 
and  then  you  perceive  that  you  have  been  drunk  on 
the  smell  of  somebody  else's  cork.  For  ever  and 
ever  the  memory  of  my  distant  first  glimpse  of  the 
Taj  will  compensate  me  for  creeping  around  the 
globe  to  have  that  great  privilege. 

But  the  Taj  —  with  all  your  inflation  of  delusive 
emotions,  acquired  at  second-hand  from  people  to 
whom  in  the  majority  of  cases  they  were  also  delu 
sions  acquired  at  second-hand  —  a  thing  which  you 
fortunately  did  not  think  of  or  it  might  have  made 
you  doubtful  of  what  you  imagined  were  your  own 
—  what  is  the  Taj  as  a  marvel,  a  spectacle,  and  an 
uplifting  and  overpowering  wonder,  compared  with 
a  living,  breathing,  speaking  personage  whom  several 
millions  of  human  beings  devoutly  and  sincerely  and 
unquestioningly  believe  to  be  a  god,  and  humbly 
and  gratefully  worship  as  a  god? 

He  was  sixty  years  old  when  I  saw  him.  He  is 
called  Sri  108  Swami  Bhaskarananda  Saraswati. 
That  is  one  form  of  it.  I  think  that  that  is  what 


Following  the  Equator  205 

you  would  call  him  in  speaking  to  him  —  because  it 
is  short.  But  you  would  use  more  of  his  name  in 
addressing  a  letter  to  him ;  courtesy  would  require 
this.  Even  then  you  would  not  have  to  use  all  of 
it,  but  only  this  much : 

Sri  108  Matparamahansaparivrajakacharyaswam- 
ibhaskaranandasaraswati. 

You  do  not  put  "  Esq."  after  it,  for  that  is  not 
necessary.  The  word  which  opens  the  volley  is 
itself  a  title  of  honor— "  Sri."  The  "  108  "  stands 
for  the  rest  of  his  names,  I  believe.  Vishnu  has 
108  names  which  he  does  not  use  in  business,  and 
no  doubt  it  is  a  custom  of  gods  and  a  privilege 
sacred  to  their  order  to  keep  108  extra  ones  in 
stock.  Just  the  restricted  name  set  down  above  is  a 
handsome  property,  without  the  108.  By  my  count 
it  has  58  letters  in  it.  This  removes  the  long  Ger 
man  words  from  competition ;  they  are  permanently 
out  of  the  race. 

Sri  108  S.  B.  Saraswati  has  attained  to  what 
among  the  Hindoos  is  called  the  "  state  of  perfec 
tion."  It  is  a  state  which  other  Hindoos  reach  by 
being  born  again  and  again,  and  over  and  over 
again  into  this  world,  through  one  re-incarnation 
after  another  —  a  tiresome  long  job  covering  cen 
turies  and  decades  of  centuries,  and  one  that  is  full 
of  risks,  too,  like  the  accident  of  dying  on  the  wrong 
side  of  the  Ganges  some  time  or  other  and  waking 
up  in  the  form  of  an  ass,  with  a  fresh  start  necessary 

and   the   numerous   trips  to  be  made  all  over  again. 

14** 


206  Following  the  Equator 

But  in  reaching  perfection,  Sri  108  S.  B.  S.  has 
escaped  all  that.  He  is  no  longer  a  part  or  a 
feature  of  this  world;  his  substance  has  changed, 
all  earthiness  has  departed  out  of  it;  he  is  utterly 
holy,  utterly  pure ;  nothing  can  desecrate  this  holi 
ness  or  stain  this  purity;  he  is  no  longer  of  the 
earth,  its  concerns  are  matters  foreign  to  him,  its 
pains  and  griefs  and  troubles  cannot  reach  him. 
When  he  dies,  Nirvana  is  his ;  he  will  be  absorbed 
into  the  substance  of  the  Supreme  Deity  and  be  at 
peace  forever. 

The  Hindoo  Scriptures  point  out  how  this  state  is 
to  be  reached,  but  it  is  only  once  in  a  thousand 
years,  perhaps,  that  a  candidate  accomplishes  it. 
This  one  has  traversed  the  course  required,  stage 
by  stage,  from  the  beginning  to  the  end,  and  now 
has  nothing  left  to  do  but  wait  for  the  call  which 
shall  release  him  from  a  world  in  which  he  has  now 
no  part  nor  lot.  First,  he  passed  through  the 
student  stage,  and  became  learned  in  the  holy 
books.  Next  he  became  citizen,  householder,  hus 
band,  and  father.  That  was  the  required  second 
stage.  Then  —  like  John  Bunyan's  Christian  —  he 
bade  perpetual  good-bye  to  his  family,  as  required, 
and  went  wandering  away.  He  went  far  into  the 
desert  and  served  a  term  as  hermit.  Next,  he  be 
came  a  beggar,  "  in  accordance  with  the  rites  laid 
down  in  the  Scriptures,"  and  wandered  about  India 
eating  the  bread  of  mendicancy.  A  quarter  of  a 
century  ago  he  reached  the  stage  of  purity.  This 


Following  the  Equator  207 

needs  no  garment;  its  symbol  is  nudity;  he  dis 
carded  the  waist-cloth  which  he  had  previously 
worn.  He  could  resume  it  now  if  he  chose,  for 
neither  that  nor  any  other  contact  can  defile  him ; 
but  he  does  not  choose. 

There  are  several  other  stages,  I  believe,  but  I  do 
not  remember  what  they  are.  But  he  has  been 
through  them.  Throughout  the  long  course  he  was 
perfecting  himself  in  holy  learning,  and  writing 
commentaries  upon  the  sacred  books.  He  was  also 
meditating  upon  Brahma,  and  he  does  that  now. 

White  marble  relief-portraits  of  him  are  sold  all 
about  India.  He  lives  in  a  good  house  in  a  noble 
great  garden  in  Benares,  all  meet  and  proper  to  his 
stupendous  rank.  Necessarily,  he  does  not  go  abroad 
in  the  streets.  Deities  would  never  be  able  to  move 
about  handily  in  any  country.  If  one  whom  we 
recognized  and  adored  as  a  god  should  go  abroad 
in  our  streets,  and  the  day  it  was  to  happen  were 
known,  all  traffic  would  be  blocked  and  business 
would  come  to  a  standstill. 

This  god  is  comfortably  housed,  and  yet  modestly, 
all  things  considered,  for  if  he  wanted  to  live  in  a 
palace  he  would  only  need  to  speak  and  his  worship 
ers  would  gladly  build  it.  Sometimes  he  sees  de 
votees  for  a  moment,  and  comforts  them  and  blesses 
them,  and  they  kiss  his  feet  and  go  away  happy. 
Rank  is  nothing  to  him,  he  being  a  god.  To  him 
all  men  are  alike.  He  sees  whom  he  pleases  and 
denies  himself  to  whom  he  pleases.  Sometimes  he 


208  Following  the  Equator 

sees  a  prince  and  denies  himself  to  a  pauper;  at 
other  times  he  receives  the  pauper  and  turns  the 
prince  away.  However,  he  does  not  receive  many 
of  either  class.  He  has  to  husband  his  time  for  hit 
meditations.  I  think  he  would  receive  Rev.  Mr. 
Parker  at  any  time.  I  think  he  is  sorry  for  Mr. 
Parker,  and  I  think  Mr.  Parker  is  sorry  for  him; 
and  no  doubt  this  compassion  is  good  for  both  of 
them. 

When  we  arrived  we  had  to  stand  around  in  the 
garden  a  little  while  and  wait,  and  the  outlook  was 
not  good,  for  he  had  been  turning  away  Maharajas 
that  day  and  receiving  only  the  rifr-raff,  and  we  be 
longed  in  between,  somewhere.  But  presently,  a 
servant  came  out  saying  it  ua^  all  right,  he  was 
coming. 

And  sure  enough,  he  came,  and  I  saw  him  —  that 
object  of  the  worship  of  millions.  It  was  a  strange 
sensation,  and  thrilling.  I  wish  I  could  feel  it  stream 
through  my  veins  again.  And  yet,  to  me  he  was 
not  a  god,  he  was  only  a  Taj.  The  thrill  was  not 
my  thrill,  but  had  come  to  me  second-hand  from 
those  invisible  millions  of  believers.  By  a  hand 
shake  with  their  god  I  had  ground-circuited  their 
wire  and  got  their  monster  battery's  whole  charge. 

He  was  tall  and  slender,  indeed  emaciated.  He 
had  a  clean  cut  and  conspicuously  intellectual  face, 
and  a  deep  and  kindly  eye.  He  looked  many  years 
older  than  he  really  was,  but  much  study  and  medi 
tation  and  fasting  and  prayer,  with  the  arid  life  he 


Following  the  Equator  209 

had  led  as  hermit  and  beggar,  could  account  for 
that.  He  is  wholly  nude  when  he  receives  natives, 
of  whatever  rank  they  may  be,  but  he  had  white 
cloth  around  his  loins  now,  a  concession  to  Mr. 
Parker's  European  prejudices,  no  doubt. 

As  soon  as  I  had  sobered  down  a  little  we  got 
along  very  well  together,  and  I  found  him  a  most 
pleasant  and  friendly  deity.  He  had  heard  a  deal 
about  Chicago,  and  showed  a  quite  remarkable  in 
terest  in  it,  for  a  god.  It  all  came  of  the  World's 
Fair  and  the  Congress  of  Religions.  If  India  knows 
about  nothing  else  American,  she  knows  about 
those,  and  will  keep  them  in  mind  one  while. 

He  proposed  an  exchange  of  autographs,  a  deli 
cate  attention  which  made  me  believe  in  him,  but  I 
had  been  having  my  doubts  before.  He  wrote  his 
in  his  book,  and  I  have  a  reverent  regard  for  that 
book,  though  the  words  run  from  right  to  left,  and 
so  I  can't  read  it.  It  was  a  mistake  to  print  in  that 
way.  It  contains  his  voluminous  comments  on  the 
Hindoo  holy  writings,  and  if  I  could  make  them  out 
I  would  try  for  perfection  myself.  I  gave  him  a 
copy  of  Huckleberry  Finn.  I  thought  it  might  rest 
him  up  a  little  to  mix  it  in  along  with  his  medita 
tions  on  Brahma,  for  he  looked  tired,  and  I  knew 
that  if  it  didn't  do  him  any  good  it  wouldn't  do  him 
any  harm. 

He  has  a  scholar  meditating  under  him  —  Mina 
Bahadur  Rana  —  but  we  did  not  see  him.  He  wears 
clothes  and  is  very  imperfect.  He  has  written  a 
U*« 


210  Following  the  Equator 

little  pamphlet  about  his  master,  and  I  have  that. 
It  contains  a  wood-cut  of  the  master  and  himself 
seated  on  a  rug  in  the  garden.  The  portrait  of  the 
master  is  very  good,  indeed.  The  posture  is  ex 
actly  that  which  Brahma  himself  affects,  and  it  re 
quires  long  arms  and  limber  legs,  and  can  be  accu 
mulated  only  by  gods  and  the  india-rubber  man. 
There  is  a  life-size  marble  relief  of  Sri  108,  S.B.S.  in 
the  garden.  It  represents  him  in  this  same  posture. 
Dear  me  !  It  is  a  strange  world.  Particularly  the 
Indian  division  of  it.  This  pupil,  Mina  Bahadur 
Rana,  is  not  a  commonplace  person,  but  a  man  of 
distinguished  capacities  and  attainments,  and,  appar 
ently,  he  had  a  fine  worldly  career  in  front  of  him. 
He  was  serving  the  Nepal  Government  in  a  high 
capacity  at  the  Court  of  the  Viceroy  of  India,  twenty 
years  ago.  He  was  an  able  man,  educated,  a  thinker, 
a  man  of  property.  But  the  longing  to  devote  him 
self  to  a  religious  life  came  upon  him,  and  he  re 
signed  his  place,  turned  his  back  upon  the  vanities 
and  comforts  of  the  world,  and  went  away  into  the 
solitudes  to  live  in  a  hut  and  study  the  sacred 
writings  and  meditate  upon  virtue  and  holiness  and 
seek  to  attain  them.  This  sort  of  religion  resembles 
ours.  Christ  recommended  the  rich  to  give  away 
all  their  property  and  follow  Him  in  poverty,  not  in 
worldly  comfort.  American  and  English  millionaires 
do  it  every  day,  and  thus  verify  and  confirm  to  the 
world  the  tremendous  forces  that  lie  in  religion. 
Yet  many  people  scoff  at  them  for  this  loyalty  to 


Following  the  Equator  211 

duty,  and  many  will  scoff  at  Mina  Bahadur  Rana 
and  call  him  a  crank.  Like  many  Christians  of 
great  character  and  intellect,  he  has  made  the  study 
of  his  Scriptures  and  the  writing  of  books  of  com 
mentaries  upon  them  the  loving  labor  of  his  life. 
Like  them,  he  has  believed  that  this  was  not  an  idle 
and  foolish  waste  of  his  life,  but  a  most  worthy  and 
honorable  employment  of  it.  Yet,  there  are  many 
people  who  will  see  in  those  others,  men  worthy  of 
homage  and  deep  reverence,  but  in  him  merely  a 
crank.  But  I  shall  not.  He  has  my  reverence. 
And  I  don't  offer  it  as  a  common  thing  and  poor, 
but  as  an  unusual  thing  and  of  value.  The  ordinary 
reverence,  the  reverence  defined  and  explained  by 
the  dictionary,  costs  nothing.  Reverence  for  one's 
own  sacred  things  —  parents,  religion,  flag,  laws, 
and  respect  for  one's  own  beliefs  —  these  are  feel 
ings  which  we  cannot  even  help.  They  come 
natural  to  us ;  they  are  involuntary,  like  breathing. 
There  is  no  personal  merit  in  breathing.  But  the 
reverence  which  is  difficult,  and  which  has  personal 
merit  in  it,  is  the  respect  which  you  pay,  without 
compulsion,  to  the  political  or  religious  attitude  of 
a  man  whose  beliefs  are  not  yours.  You  can't 
revere  his  gods  or  his  politics,  and  no  one  expects 
you  to  do  that,  but  you  could  respect  his  belief  in 
them  if  you  tried  hard  enough;  and  you  could  re 
spect  him,  too,  if  you  tried  hard  enough.  But  it  is 
very,  very  difficult;  it  is  next  to  impossible,  and  so 
we  hardly  ever  try.  If  the  man  doesn't  believe  as 


212  Following  the  Equator 

we  do,  we  say  he  is  a  crank,  and  that  settles  it.  I 
mean  it  does  nowadays,  because  now  we  can't  burn 
him. 

We  are  always  canting  about  people's  "  irrever 
ence,"  always  charging  this  offense  upon  somebody 
or  other,  and  thereby  intimating  that  we  are  better 
than  that  person  and  do  not  commit  that  offense 
ourselves.  Whenever  we  do  this  we  are  in  a  lying 
attitude,  and  our  speech  is  cant;  for  none  of  us  are 
reverent — in  a  meritorious  way;  deep  down  in  our 
hearts  we  are  all  irreverent.  There  is  probably  not 
a  single  exception  to  this  rule  in  the  earth.  There 
is  probably  not  one  person  whose  reverence  rises 
higher  than  respect  for  his  own  sacred  things ;  and 
therefore,  it  is  not  a  thing  to  boast  about  and  be 
proud  of,  since  the  most  degraded  savage  has  that  — 
and,  like  the  best  of  us,  has  nothing  higher.  To 
speak  plainly,  we  despise  all  reverences  and  all  ob 
jects  of  reverence  which  are  outside  the  pale  of  our 
own  list  of  sacred  things.  And  yet,  with  strange 
inconsistency,  we  are  shocked  when  other  people 
despise  and  defile  the  things  which  are  holy  to  us. 
Suppose  we  should  meet  with  a  paragraph  like  the 
following,  in  the  newspapers: 

1  Yesterday  a  visiting  party  of  the  British  nobility 
had  a  picnic  at  Mount  Vernon,  and  in  the  tomb  of 
Washington  they  ate  their  luncheon,  sang  popular 
songs,  played  games,  and  danced  waltzes  and 
polkas." 

Should    we    be   shocked?     Should    we    feel    out- 


Following  the  Equator  213 

raged?  Should  we  be  amazed?  Should  we  call 
the  performance  a  desecration?  Yes,  that  would  all 
happen.  We  should  denounce  those  people  in 
round  terms,  and  call  them  hard  names. 

And  suppose  we  found  this  paragraph  in  the 
newspapers : 

"Yesterday  a  visiting  party  of  American  pork- 
millionaires  had  a  picnic  in  Westminster  Abbey,  and 
in  that  sacred  place  they  ate  their  luncheon,  sang 
popular  songs,  played  games,  and  danced  waltzes 
and  polkas." 

Would  the  English  be  shocked  ?  Would  they  feel 
outraged?  Would  they  be  amazed?  Would  they 
call  the  performance  a  desecration?  That  would  all 
happen.  The  pork-millionaires  would  be  denounced 
in  round  terms;  they  would  be  called  hard  names. 

In  the  tomb  at  Mount  Vernon  lie  the  ashes  of 
America's  most  honored  son;  in  the  Abbey,  the 
ashes  of  England's  greatest  dead;  the  tomb  of 
tombs,  the  costliest  in  the  earth,  the  wonder  of  the 
world,  the  Taj,  was  built  by  a  great  Emperor  to 
honor  the  memory  of  a  perfect  wife  and  perfect 
mother,  one  in  whom  there  was  no  spot  or  blemish, 
whose  love  was  his  stay  and  support,  whose  life  was 
the  light  of  the  world  to  him ;  in  it  her  ashes  lie, 
and  to  the  Mohammedan  millions  of  India  it  is  a 
holy  place ;  to  them  it  is  what  Mount  Vernon  is  to 
Americans,  it  is  what  the  Abbey  is  to  the  English. 

Major  Sleeman  wrote  forty  or  fifty  years  ago  (the 
italics  are  mine)  : 


rfw. 

214  Following  the  Equator 

"  I  would  here  enter  my  humble  protest  against  the  quadrille  and 
lunch  parties  which  are  sometimes  given  to  European  ladies  and  gen 
tlemen  of  the  station  at  this  imperial  tomb;  drinking  and  dancing  are 
no  doubt  very  good  things  in  their  season,  but  they  are  sadly  out  of 
place  in  a  sepulchred 

Were  there  any  Americans  among  those  lunch 
parties?  If  they  were  invited,  there  were. 

If  my  imagined  lunch-parties  in  Westminster  and 
the  tomb  of  Washington  should  take  place,  the 
incident  would  cause  a  vast  outbreak  of  bitter  elo 
quence  about  Barbarism  and  Irreverence;  and  it 
would  come  from  two  sets  of  people  who  would  go 
next  day  and  dance  in  the  Taj  if  they  had  a  chance. 

As  we  took  our  leave  of  the  Benares  god  and 
started  away  we  noticed  a  group  of  natives  waiting 
respectfully  just  within  the  gate  —  a  Rajah  from 
somewhere  in  India,  and  some  people  of  lesser  con 
sequence.  The  god  beckoned  them  to  come,  and 
as  we  passed  out  the  Rajah  was  kneeling  and  rever 
ently  kissing  his  sacred  feet. 

If  Barnum  —  but  Barnum's  ambitions  are  at  rest. 
This  god  will  remain  in  the  holy  peace  and  seculsion 
of  his  garden,  undisturbed.  Barnum  could  not  have 
gotten  him,  anyway.  Still,  he  would  have  found  a 
substitute  that  would  answer. 


CHAPTER   XVIII. 

Do  not  undervalue  the  headache.  While  it  is  at  its  sharpest  it  seems  a  bad 
investment ;  but  when  relief  begins,  the  unexpired  remainder  is  worth  $4  a 
minute. — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

S  COMFORTABLE  railway  journey  of  seventeea 
and  a  half  hours  brought  us  to  the  capital  of 
India,  which  is  likewise  the  capital  of  Bengal  —  Cal 
cutta.  Like  Bombay,  it  has  a  population  of  nearly 
a  million  natives  and  a  small  gathering  of  white 
people.  It  is  a  huge  city  and  fine,  and  is  called  the 
City  of  Palaces.  It  is  rich  in  historical  memories; 
rich  in  British  achievement  —  military,  political, 
commercial;  rich  in  the  results  of  the  miracles 
done  by  that  brace  of  mighty  magicians,  Clive  and 
Hastings.  And  has  a  cloud-kissing  monument  to 
one  Ochterlony. 

It  is  a  fluted  candlestick  250  feet  high.  This 
lingam  is  the  only  large  monument  in  Calcutta,  I 
believe.  It  is  a  fine  ornament,  and  will  keep  Och 
terlony  in  mind. 

Wherever  you  are,  in  Calcutta,  and  for  miles 
around,  you  can  see  it;  and  always  when  you  see  it 
you  think  of  Ochterlony.  And  so  there  is  not  an 
hour  in  the  day  that  you  do  not  think  of  Ochterlony 

(•if) 


216  Following  the  Equator 

and  wonder  who  he  was.  It  is  good  that  Clive  can 
not  come  back,  for  he  would  think  it  was  for 
Plassey;  and  then  that  great  spirit  would  be 
wounded  when  the  revelation  came  that  it  was  not. 
Clive  would  find  out  that  it  was  for  Ochterlony; 
and  he  would  think  Ochterlony  was  a  battle.  And 
he  would  think  it  was  a  great  one,  too,  and  he  would 
say,  "With  three  thousand  I  whipped  sixty  thou 
sand  and  founded  the  Empire  —  and  there  is  no 
monument;  this  other  soldier  must  have  whipped  a 
billion  with  a  dozen  and  saved  the  world." 

But  he  would  be  mistaken.  Ochterlony  was  a 
man,  not  a  battle.  And  he  did  good  and  honorable 
service,  too ;  as  good  and  honorable  service  as  has 
been  done  in  India  by  seventy-five  or  a  hundred 
other  Englishmen  of  courage,  rectitude,  and  dis 
tinguished  capacity.  For  India  has  been  a  fertile 
breeding-ground  of  such  men,  and  remains  so;  great 
men,  both  in  war  and  in  the  civil  service,  and  as 
modest  as  great.  But  they  have  no  monuments, 
and  were  not  expecting  any.  Ochterlony  could  not 
have  been  expecting  one,  and  it  is  not  at  all  likely 
that  he  desired  one  —  certainly  not  until  Clive  and 
Hastings  should  be  supplied.  Every  day  Clive  and 
Hastings  lean  on  the  battlements  of  heaven  and  look 
down  and  wonder  which  of  the  two  the  monument 
is  for ;  and  they  fret  and  worry  because  they  cannot 
find  out,  and  so  the  peace  of  heaven  is  spoiled  for 
them  and  lost.  But  not  for  Ochterlony.  Ochter 
lony  is  not  troubled.  He  doesn't  suspect  that  it  is 


Following  the  Equator  217 

his  monument.  Heaven  is  sweet  and  peaceful  to 
him.  There  is  a  sort  of  unfairness  about  it  all. 

Indeed,  if  monuments  were  always  given  in  India 
for  high  achievements,  duty  straitly  performed,  and 
smirchless  records,  the  landscape  would  be  monot 
onous  with  them.  The  handful  of  English  in  India 
govern  the  Indian  myriads  with  apparent  ease,  and 
without  noticeable  friction,  through  tact,  training,  and 
distinguished  administrative  ability,  reinforced  by 
just  and  liberal  laws  —  and  by  keeping  their  word  to 
the  native  whenever  they  give  it. 

England  is  far  from  India  and  knows  little  about 
the  eminent  services  performed  by  her  servants  there, 
for  it  is  the  newspaper  correspondent  who  makes 
fame,  and  he  is  not  sent  to  India  but  to  the  continent, 
to  report  the  doings  of  the  princelets  and  the  duke- 
lets,  and  where  they  are  visiting  and  whom  they  are 
marrying.  Often  a  British  official  spends  thirty  or 
forty  years  in  India,  climbing  from  grade  to  grade 
by  services  which  would  make  him  celebrated  any 
where  else,  and  finishes  as  a  vice-sovereign,  governing 
a  great  realm  and  millions  of  subjects ;  then  he  goes 
home  to  England  substantially  unknown  and  unheard 
of,  and  settles  down  in  some  modest  corner,  and  is 
as  one  extinguished.  Ten  years  later  there  is  a 
twenty-line  obituary  in  the  London  papers,  and  the 
reader  is  paralyzed  by  the  splendors  of  a  career 
which  he  is  not  sure  that  he  had  ever  heard  of 
before.  But  meanwhile  he  has  learned  all  about  the 
continental  princelets  and  dukelets. 


218  Following  the  Equator 

The  average  man  is  profoundly  ignorant  of  coun 
tries  that  lie  remote  from  his  own.  When  they  are 
mentioned  in  his  presence  one  or  two  facts  and 
maybe  a  couple  of  names  rise  like  torches  in  his 
mind,  lighting  up  an  inch  or  two  of  it  and  leaving 
the  rest  all  dark.  The  mention  of  Egypt  suggests 
some  Biblical  facts  and  the  Pyramids  —  nothing 
more.  The  mention  of  South  Africa  suggests 
Kimberley  and  the  diamonds  and  there  an  end. 
Formerly  the  mention,  to  a  Hindoo,  of  America 
suggested  a  name  —  George  Washington  —  with  that 
his  familiarity  with  our  country  was  exhausted. 
Latterly  his  familiarity  with  it  has  doubled  in  bulk ; 
so  that  when  America  is  mentioned  now,  two  torches 
flare  up  in  the  dark  caverns  of  his  mind  and  he  says, 
"  Ah,  the  country  of  the  great  man  —  Washington; 
and  of  the  Holy  City  —  Chicago."  For  he  knows 
about  the  Congress  of  Religions,  and  this  has  enabled 
him  to  get  an  erroneous  impression  of  Chicago. 

When  India  is  mentioned  to  the  citizen  of  a  far 
country  it  suggests  Clive,  Hastings,  the  Mutiny, 
Kipling,  and  a  number  of  other  great  events ;  and 
the  mention  of  Calcutta  infallibly  brings  up  the  Black 
Hole.  And  so,  when  that  citizen  finds  himself  in 
the  capital  of  India  he  goes  first  of  all  to  see  the 
Black  Hole  of  Calcutta  —  and  is  disappointed. 

The  Black  Hole  was  not  preserved;  it  is  gone, 
long,  long  ago.  It  is  strange.  Just  as  it  stood,  it 
was  itself  a  monument;  a  ready-made  one.  It  was 
finished,  it  was  complete,  its  materials  were  strong 


Following  the  Equator  219 

and  lasting,  it  needed  no  furbishing  up,  no  repairs; 
it  merely  needed  to  be  let  alone.  It  was  the  first 
brick,  the  Foundation  Stone,  upon  which  was  reared 
a  mighty  Empire  —  the  Indian  Empire  of  Great 
Britain.  It  was  the  ghastly  episode  of  the  Black 
Hole  that  maddened  the  British  and  brought  Clive, 
that  young  military  marvel,  raging  up  from  Madras; 
it  was  the  seed  from  which  sprung  Plassey ;  and  it 
was  that  extraordinary  battle,  whose  like  had  not 
been  seen  in  the  earth  since  Agincourt,  that  laid 
deep  and  strong  the  foundations  of  England's  colos 
sal  Indian  sovereignty. 

And  yet  within  the  time  of  men  who  still  live, 
the  Black  Hole  was  torn  down  and  thrown  away  as 
carelessly  as  if  its  bricks  were  common  clay,  not 
ingots  of  historic  gold.  There  is  no  accounting  for 
human  beings. 

The  supposed  site  of  the  Black  Hole  is  marked  by 
an  engraved  plate.  I  saw  that;  and  better  that  than 
nothing.  The  Black  Hole  was  a  prison  —  a  cell  is 
nearer  the  right  word  —  eighteen  feet  square,  the 
dimensions  of  an  ordinary  bed-chamber;  and  into 
this  place  the  victorious  Nabob  of  Bengal  packed  146 
of  his  English  prisoners.  There  was  hardly  standing 
room  for  them ;  scarcely  a  breath  of  air  was  to  be 
got:  the  time  was  night,  the  weather  sweltering  hot. 
Before  the  dawn  came,  the  captives  were  all  dead 
but  twenty-three.  Mr.  Holwell's  long  account  of 
the  awful  episode  was  familiar  to  the  world  a  hundred 
years  ago,  but  one  seldom  sees  in  print  even  an 


220  Following  the  Equator 

extract  from  it  in  our  day.  Among  the  striking 
things  in  it  is  this.  Mr.  Holwell,  perishing  with 
thirst,  kept  himself  alive  by  sucking  the  perspiration 
from  his  sleeves.  It  gives  one  a  vivid  idea  of  the 
situation.  He  presently  found  that  while  he  was  busy 
drawing  life  from  one  of  his  sleeves  a  young  English 
gentleman  was  stealing  supplies  from  the  other 
one.  Holwell  was  an  unselfish  man,  a  man  of  the 
most  generous  impulses ;  he  lived  and  died  famous 
for  these  fine  and  rare  qualities ;  yet  when  he  found 
out  what  was  happening  to  that  unwatched  sleeve, 
he  took  the  precaution  to  suck  that  one  dry  first. 
The  miseries  of  the  Black  Hole  were  able  to  change 
even  a  nature  like  his.  But  that  young  gentleman 
was  one  of  the  twenty-three  survivors,  and  he  said  it 
was  the  stolen  perspiration  that  saved  his  life.  From 
the  middle  of  Mr.  Holwell' s  narrative  I  will  make  a 
brief  excerpt: 

"  Then  a  general  prayer  to  Heaven,  to  hasten  the  approach  of  the 
flames  to  the  right  and  left  of  us,  and  put  a  period  to  our  misery.  But 
these  failing,  they  whose  strength  and  spirits  were  quite  exhausted  laid 
themselves  down  and  expired  quietly  upon  their  fellows;  others  who  had 
yet  some  strength  and  vigor  left  made  a  last  effort  at  the  windows,  and 
several  succeeded  by  leaping  and  scrambling  over  the  backs  and  heads 
of  those  in  the  first  rank,  and  got  hold  of  the  bars,  from  which  there 
was  no  removing  them.  Many  to  the  right  and  left  sunk  with  the  vio 
lent  pressure,  and  were  soon  suffocated;  for  now  a  steam  arose  from  the 
living  and  the  dead,  which  affected  us  in  all  its  circumstances  as  if  we 
were  forcibly  held  with  our  heads  over  a  bowl  full  of  strong  volatile 
spirit  of  hartshorn,  until  suffocated;  nor  could  the  effluvia  of  the  one  be 
distinguished  from  the  other,  and  frequently,  when  I  was  forced  by  the 
load  upon  my  head  and  shoulders  to  hold  my  face  down,  I  was  obliged, 
near  as  I  was  to  the  window,  instantly  to  raise  it  again  to  avoid  suffoca- 


Following  the  Equator  221 

tion.  I  need  not,  my  dear  friend,  ask  your  commiseration,  when  I  tell 
you,  that  in  this  plight,  from  half  an  hour  past  eleven  till  near  two  in 
the  morning,  I  sustained  the  weight  of  a  heavy  man,  with  his  knees  in 
my  back,  and  the  pressure  of  his  whole  body  on  my  head,  a  Dutch 
surgeon  who  had  taken  his  seat  upon  my  left  shoulder,  and  a  Topaz  (a 
black  Christian  soldier)  bearing  on  my  right;  all  which  nothing  could 
have  enabled  me  to  support  but  the  props  and  pressure  equally  sustain 
ing  me  all  around.  The  two  latter  I  frequently  dislodged  by  shifting  my 
hold  on  the  bars  and  driving  my  knuckles  into  their  ribs;  but  my  friend 
above  stuck  fast,  held  immovable  by  two  bars. 

"  I  exerted  anew  my  strength  and  fortitude;  but  the  repeated  trials 
and  efforts  I  made  to  dislodge  the  insufferable  incumbrances  upon  me  at 
last  quite  exhausted  me;  and  towards  two  o'clock,  finding  I  must  quit 
the  window  or  sink  where  I  was,  I  resolved  on  the  former,  having  bore, 
truly  for  the  sake  of  others,  infinitely  more  for  life  than  the  best  of  it  is 
worth.  In  the  rank  close  behind  me  was  an  officer  of  one  of  the  ships, 
whose  name  was  Gary,  and  who  had  behaved  with  much  bravery  during 
the  siege  (his  wife,  a  fine  woman,  though  country  born,  would  not  quit 
him,  but  accompanied  him  into  the  prison,  and  was  one  who  survived). 
This  poor  wretch  had  been  long  raving  for  water  and  air;  I  told  him  I 
was  determined  to  give  up  life,  and  recommended  his  gaining  my  station. 
On  my  quitting  it  he  made  a  fruitless  attempt  to  get  my  place;  but  the 
Dutch  surgeon  who  sat  on  my  shoulder  supplanted  him.  Poor  Gary 
expressed  his  thankfulness,  and  said  he  would  give  up  life  too;  but  it 
was  with  the  utmost  labor  we  forced  our  way  from  the  window  (several 
in  the  inner  ranks  appearing  to  me  dead  standing,  unable  to  fall  by  the 
throng  and  equal  pressure  around).  He  laid  himself  down  to  die;  and 
his  death,  I  believe,  was  very  sudden;  for  he  was  a  short,  full,  sanguine 
man.  His  strength  was  great;  and,  I  imagine,  had  he  not  retired  with 
me,  I  should  never  have  been  able  to  force  my  way.  I  was  at  this  time 
sensible  of  no  pain,  and  little  uneasiness;  I  can  give  you  no  better  idea 
of  my  situation  than  by  repeating  my  simile  of  the  bowl  of  spirit  of 
hartshorn.  I  found  a  stupor  coming  on  apace,  and  laid  myself  down  by 
that  gallant  old  man,  the  Rev.  Mr.  Jervas  Bellamy,  who  laid  dead  with 
his  son,  the  lieutenant,  hand  in  hand,  near  the  southernmost  wall  of  the 
prison.  When  I  had  lain  theie  some  little  time,  I  still  had  reflection 
enough  to  suffer  some  uneasiness  in  the  thought  that  I  should  be 
trampled  upon,  when  dead,  as  I  myself  had  done  to  others.  With  some 
difficulty  I  raised  myself,  and  gained  the  platform  a  second  time,  where 
15** 


222  Following  the  Equator 

I  presently  lost  all  sensation;  the  last  trace  of  sensibility  that  I  have 
been  able  to  recollect  after  my  laying  down,  was  my  sash  being  uneasy 
about  my  waist,  which  I  untied  and  threw  from  me.  Of  what  passed 
in  this  interval,  to  the  time  of  my  resurrection  from  this  hole  of  horrors, 
I  can  give  you  no  account." 

There  was  plenty  to  see  in  Calcutta,  but  there 
was  not  plenty  of  time  for  it.  I  saw  the  fort  that 
Clive  built;  and  the  place  where  Warren  Hastings 
and  the  author  of  the  Junius  Letters  fought  their 
duel ;  and  the  great  botanical  gardens ;  and  the 
fashionable  afternoon  turnout  in  the  Maidan ;  and  a 
grand  review  of  the  garrison  in  a  great  plain  at  sun 
rise  ;  and  a  military  tournament  in  which  great  bodies 
of  native  soldiery  exhibited  the  perfection  of  their 
drill  at  all  arms,  a  spectacular  and  beautiful  show 
occupying  several  nights  and  closing  with  the  mimic 
storming  of  a  native  fort  which  was  as  good  as  the 
reality  for  thrilling  and  accurate  detail,  and  better 
than  the  reality  for  security  and  comfort;  we  had  a 
pleasure  excursion  on  the  Hoogly  by  courtesy  of 
friends,  and  devoted  the  rest  of  the  time  to  social  life 
and  the  Indian  museum.  One  should  spend  a  month 
in  the  museum,  an  enchanted  palace  of  Indian 
antiquities.  Indeed,  a  person  might  spend  half  a 
year  among  the  beautiful  and  wonderful  things 
without  exhausting  their  interest. 

It  was  winter.  We  were  of  Kipling's  "  hosts  of 
tourists  who  travel  up  and  down  India  in  the  cold 
weather  showing  how  things  ought  to  be  managed." 
It  is  a  common  expression  there,  "  the  cold  weather," 
and  the  people  think  there  is  such  a  thing.  It  is 


Following  the  Equator  223 

because  they  have  lived  there  half  a  lifetime,  and 
their  perceptions  have  become  blunted.  When  a 
person  is  accustomed  to  138  in  the  shade,  his  ideas 
about  cold  weather  are  not  valuable,  I  had  read,  in 
the  histories,  that  the  June  marches  made  between 
Lucknow  and  Cawnpore  by  the  British  forces  in  the 
time  of  the  Mutiny  were  made  in  that  kind  of  weather 
—  138  in  the  shade  —  and  had  taken  it  for  historical 
embroidery.  I  had  read  it  again  in  Serjeant-Major 
Forbes-Mitchell's  account  of  his  military  experiences 
in  the  Mutiny  —  at  least  I  thought  I  had  —  and  in 
Calcutta  I  asked  him  if  it  was  true,  and  he  said  it 
was.  An  officer  of  high  rank  who  had  been  in  the 
thick  of  the  Mutiny  said  the  same.  As  long  as 
those  men  were  talking  about  what  they  knew,  they 
were  trustworthy,  and  I  believed  them ;  but  when 
they  said  it  was  now  "cold  weather,"  I  saw  that 
they  had  traveled  outside  of  their  sphere  of  knowl 
edge  and  were  floundering.  I  believe  that  in  India 
"cold  weather"  is  merely  a  conventional  phrase 
and  has  come  into  use  through  the  necessity  of 
having  some  way  to  distinguish  between  weather 
which  will  melt  a  brass  door-knob  and  weather  which 
will  only  make  it  mushy.  It  was  observable  that 
brass  ones  were  in  use  while  I  was  in  Calcutta, 
showing  that  it  was  not  yet  time  to  change  to 
porcelain ;  I  was  told  the  change  to  porcelain  was 
not  usually  made  until  May.  But  this  cold  weather 
was  too  warm  for  us ;  so  we  started  to  Darjeeling, 
in  the  Himalayas  —  a  twenty-four  hour  journey. 


CHAPTER   XIX. 

There  are  869  different  forms  of  lying,  but  only  one  of  them  has  been 
squarely  forbidden.    Thou  shall  not  bear  false  witness  against  thy  neighbor. 
— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

rROM  DIARY: 
February  14.     We  left  at  4:30  P.  M.     Until 
dark  we  moved  through  rich  vegetation,  then  changed 
to  a  boat  and  crossed  the  Ganges. 

February  15.  Up  with  the  sun.  A  brilliant 
morning,  and  frosty.  A  double  suit  of  flannels  is 
found  necessary.  The  plain  is  perfectly  level,  and 
seems  to  stretch  away  and  away  and  away,  dimming 
and  softening,  to  the  uttermost  bounds  of  nowhere. 
What  a  soaring,  strenuous,  gushing  fountain  spray 
of  delicate  greenery  a  bunch  of  bamboo  is  !  As  far 
as  the  eye  can  reach,  these  grand  vegetable  geysers 
grace  the  view,  their  spoutings  refined  to  steam  by 
distance.  And  there  are  fields  of  bananas,  with  the 
sunshine  glancing  from  the  varnished  surface  of 
their  drooping  vast  leaves.  And  there  are  frequent 
groves  of  palm ;  and  an  effective  accent  is  given  to 
the  landscape  by  isolated  individuals  of  this  pic 
turesque  family,  towering,  clean-stemmed,  their 

(224) 


Following  the  Equator  225 

plumes  broken  and  hanging  ragged,  Nature's  imita 
tion  of  an  umbrella  that  has  been  out  to  see  what  a 
cyclone  is  like  and  is  trying  not  to  look  disappointed. 
And  everywhere  through  the  soft  morning  vistas  we 
glimpse  the  villages,  the  countless  villages,  the 
myriad  villages,  thatched,  built  of  clean  new  mat 
ting,  snuggling  among  grouped  palms  and  sheaves 
of  bamboo;  villages,  villages,  no  end  of  villages, 
not  three  hundred  yards  apart,  and  dozens  and 
dozens  of  them  in  sight  all  the  time ;  a  mighty  City, 
hundreds  of  miles  long,  hundreds  of  miles  broad, 
made  of  all  villages,  the  biggest  city  in  the  earth,  and 
as  populous  as  a  European  kingdom.  I  have  seen 
no  such  city  as  this  before.  And  there  is  a  con 
tinuously  repeated  and  replenished  multitude  of 
naked  men  in  view  on  both  sides  and  ahead.  We 
fly  through  it  mile  after  mile,  but  still  it  is  always 
there,  on  both  sides  and  ahead  —  brown-bodied, 
naked  men  and  boys,  plowing  in  the  fields.  But 
not  a  woman.  In  these  two  hours  I  have  not  seen 
a  woman  or  a  girl  working  in  the  fields. 

"  From  Greenland's  icy  mountains, 

From  India's  coral  strand, 
Where  Aide's  sunny  fountains 

Roll  down  their  golden  sand; 
From  many  an  ancient  river, 

From  many  a  palmy  plain, 
They  call  us  to  deliver 

Their  land  from  error's  chain." 

Those    are    beautiful    verses,  and    they    have    re 
mained    in    my    memory    all    my    life.     But   if  the 


Following  the  Equator 

closing  lines  are  true,  let  us  hope  that  when  we 
come  to  answer  the  call  and  deliver  the  land  from 
its  errors,  we  shall  secrete  from  it  some  of  our  high- 
civilization  ways,  and  at  the  same  time  borrow  some 
of  its  pagan  ways  to  enrich  our  high  system  with. 
We  have  a  right  to  do  this.  If  we  lift  those  people 
up,  we  have  a  right  to  lift  ourselves  up  nine  or  ten 
grades  or  so,  at  their  expense.  A  few  years  ago  I 
spent  several  weeks  at  Tolz,  in  Bavaria.  It  is  a 
Roman  Catholic  region,  and  not  even  Benares  is 
more  deeply  or  pervasively  or  intelligently  devout. 
In  my  diary  of  those  days  I  find  this : 

"  We  took  a  long  drive  yesterday  around  about  the  lovely  country 
roads.  But  it  was  a  drive  whose  pleasure  was  damaged  in  a  couple  of 
ways:  by  the  dreadful  shrines  and  by  the  shameful  spectacle  of  gray 
and  venerable  old  grandmothers  toiling  in  the  fields.  The  shrines  were 
frequent  along  the  roads  —  figures  of  the  Saviour  nailed  to  the  cross  and 
streaming  with  blood  from  the  wounds  of  the  nails  and  thorns. 

"  When  missionaries  go  from  here  do  they  find  fault  with  the  pagan 
idols?  I  saw  many  women,  seventy  and  even  eighty  years  old,  mowing 
and  binding  in  the  fields,  and  pitchforking  the  loads  into  the  wagons." 

I  was  in  Austria  later,  and  in  Munich.  In  Munich 
I  saw  gray  old  women  pushing  trucks  up  hill  and 
down,  long  distances,  trucks  laden  with  barrels  of 
beer,  incredible  loads.  In  my  Austrian  diary  I  find 
this: 

**  In  the  fields  I  often  see  a  woman  and  a  cow  harnessed  to  thi 
plow,  and  a  man  driving. 

"  In  the  public  street  of  Marienbad  to-day,  I  saw  an  old,  bent,  gray- 
headed  woman  in  harness  with  a  dog,  drawing  a  laden  sled  over  bare 
dirt  roads  and  bare  pavements ;  and  at  his  ease  walked  the  driver, 
smoking  his  pipe,  a  hale  fellow  not  thirty  years  old." 

Five   or   six  years   ago   I   bought   an   open   boat, 


Following  the  Equator  227 

made  a  kind  of  a  canvas  wagon-roof  over  the  stern 
of  it  to  shelter  me  from  sun  and  rain ;  hired  a  courier 
and  a  boatman,  and  made  a  twelve-day  floating 
voyage  down  the  Rhone  from  Lake  Bourget  to  Mar 
seilles.  In  my  diary  of  that  trip  I  find  this  entry, 
I  was  far  down  the  Rhone  then : 

"  Passing  St.  Etienne,  2.15  P.M.  On  a  distant  ridge  inland,  a  tall 
open-work  structure  commandingly  situated,  with  a  statue  of  the 
Virgin  standing  on  it.  A  devout  country.  All  down  this  river,  wherever 
mere  is  a  crag  there  is  a  statue  of  the  Virgin  on  it.  I  believe  I  have 
seen  a  hundred  of  them.  And  yet,  in  many  respects,  the  peasantry 
^eem  to  be  mere  pagans,  and  destitute  of  any  considerable  degree  of  civil 
ization. 

"  ...  We  reached  a  not  very  promising  looking  village  about 
four  o'clock,  and  I  concluded  to  tie  up  for  the  day  ;  munching  fruit 
and  fogging  the  hood  with  pipe-smoke  had  grown  monotonous;  I  could 
not  have  the  hood  furled,  because  the  floods  of  rain  fell  unceasingly. 
The  tavern  was  on  the  river  bank,  as  is  the  custom.  It  was  dull  there, 
and  melancholy  —  nothing  to  do  but  look  out  of  the  window  into  the 
drenching  rain  and  shiver ;  one  could  do  that,  for  it  was  bleak  and  cold 
and  windy,  and  country  France  furnishes  no  fire.  Winter  overcoats 
did  not  help  me  much  ;  they  had  to  be  supplemented  with  rugs.  The 
raindrops  were  so  large  and  struck  the  river  with  such  force  that  they 
knocked  up  the  water  like  pebble-splashes. 

"  With  the  exception  of  a  very  occasional  wooden -shod  peasant, 
nobody  was  abroad  in  this  bitter  weather  —  I  mean  nobody  of  our  sex. 
But  all  weathers  are  alike  to  the  women  in  these  continental  countries. 
To  them  and  the  other  animals,  life  is  serious ;  nothing  interrupts  their 
slavery.  Three  of  them  were  washing  clothes  in  the  river  under  the 
window  when  I  arrived,  and  they  continued  at  it  as  long  as  there  was 
light  to  work  by.  One  was  apparently  thirty;  another  —  the  mother! 
—  above  fifty ;  the  third  —  grandmother  !  —  so  old  and  worn  and  gray  she 
could  have  passed  for  eighty  ;  I  took  her  to  be  that  old.  They  had  no 
waterproofs  nor  rubbers,  of  course  ;  over  their  shoulders  they  wore 
gunny-sacks  —  simply  conductors  for  rivers  of  water  ;  some  of  the  vol 
ume  reached  the  ground  ;  the  rest  soaked  in  on  the  way. 

"  At  last,  a  vigorous  fellow  of  thirty-five  arrived,  dry  and  comfort- 


228  Following  the  Equator 

able,  smoking  his  pipe  under  his  big  umbrella  in  an  open  donkey-cart  — 
husband,  son,  and  grandson  of  those  women !  He  stood  up  in  the 
cart,  sheltering  himself,  and  began  to  superintend,  issuing  his  orders  in 
a  masterly  tone  of  command,  and  showing  temper  when  they  were  not 
obeyed  swiftly  enough.  Without  complaint  or  murmur  the  drowned 
women  patiently  carried  out  the  orders,  lifting  the  immense  baskets  of 
soggy,  wrung-out  clothing  into  the  cart  and  stowing  them  to  the  man's 
satisfaction.  There  were  six  of  the  great  baskets,  and  a  man  of  mere 
ordinary  strength  could  not  have  lifted  any  one  of  them.  The  cart  be 
ing  full  now,  the  Frenchman  descended,  still  sheltered  by  his  umbrella, 
entered  the  tavern,  and  the  women  went  drooping  homeward,  trudging 
in  the  wake  of  the  cart,  and  soon  were  blended  with  the  deluge  and  lost 
to  sight. 

"  When  I  went  down  into  the  public  room,  the  Frenchman  had  his 
bottle  of  wine  and  plate  of  food  on  a  bare  table  black  with  grease,  and 
was  '  chomping  '  like  a  horse.  He  had  the  little  religious  paper 
which  is  in  everybody's  hands  on  the  Rhone  borders,  and  was  enlighten 
ing  himself  with  the  histories  of  French  saints  who  used  to  flee  to  the 
desert  in  the  Middle  Ages  to  escape  the  contamination  of  woman.  For 
two  hundred  years  France  has  been  sending  missionaries  to  other  savage 
lands.  To  spare  to  the  needy  from  poverty  like  hers  is  fine  and  true 
generosity." 

But  to  get  back  to  India  —  where,  as  my  favorite 
poem  says : 

"  Every  prospect  pleases, 
And  only  man  is  vile." 

It  is  because  Bavaria  and  Austria  and  France 
have  not  introduced  their  civilization  to  him  yet. 
But  Bavaria  and  Austria  and  France  are  on  their 
way.  They  are  coming.  They  will  rescue  him ; 
they  will  refine  the  vileness  out  of  him. 

Some  time  during  the  forenoon,  approaching  the 
mountains,  we  changed  from  the  regular  train  to 
one  composed  of  little  canvas-sheltered  cars  that 
skimmed  along  within  a  foot  of  the  ground  and 


Following  the  Equator  229 

seemed  to  be  going  fifty  miles  an  hour  when  they 
were  really  making  about  twenty.  Each  car  had 
seating  capacity  for  half  a  dozen  persons;  and 
when  the  curtains  were  up  one  was  substantially 
out  of  doors,  and  could  see  everywhere,  and  get 
all  the  breeze,  and  be  luxuriously  comfortable.  It 
was  not  a  pleasure  excursion  in  name  only,  but  in 
fact. 

After  a  while  we  stopped  at  a  little  wooden  coop 
of  a  station  just  within  the  curtain  of  the  somber 
jungle,  a  place  with  a  deep  and  dense  forest  of  great 
trees  and  scrub  and  vines  all  about  it.  The  royal 
Bengal  tiger  is  in  great  force  there,  and  is  very  bold 
and  unconventional.  From  this  lonely  little  station 
a  message  once  went  to  the  railway  manager  in  Cal 
cutta:  "  Tiger  eating  station-master  on  front  porch; 
telegraph  instructions." 

It  was  there  that  I  had  my  first  tiger  hunt.  I 
killed  thirteen.  We  were  presently  away  again,  and 
the  train  began  to  climb  the  mountains.  In  one 
place  seven  wild  elephants  crossed  the  track,  but 
two  of  them  got  away  before  I  could  overtake  them. 
The  railway  journey  up  the  mountain  is  forty  miles, 
and  it  takes  eight  hours  to  make  it.  It  is  so  wild 
and  interesting  and  exciting  and  enchanting  that  it 
ought  to  take  a  week.  As  for  the  vegetation,  it  is  a 
museum.  The  jungle  seemed  to  contain  samples 
of  every  rare  and  curious  tree  and  bush  that  we 
had  ever  seen  or  heard  of.  It  is  from  that  mu 
seum,  I  think,  that  the  globe  must  have  been  sup- 


230  Following  the  Equator 

plied  with  the  trees  and  vines  and  shrubs  that  it  holds 
precious. 

The  road  is  infinitely  and  charmingly  crooked.  It 
goes  winding  in  and  out  under  lofty  cliffs  that  are 
smothered  in  vines  and  foliage,  and  around  the 
edges  of  bottomless  chasms;  and  all  the  way  one 
glides  by  files  of  picturesque  natives,  some  carrying 
burdens  up,  others  going  down  from  their  work  in 
the  tea-gardens;  and  once  there  was  a  gaudy  wed 
ding  procession,  all  bright  tinsel  and  color,  and  a 
bride,  comely  and  girlish,  who  peeped  out  from  the 
curtains  of  her  palanquin,  exposing  her  face  with 
that  pure  delight  which  the  young  and  happy  take 
in  sin  for  sin's  own  sake. 

By  and  by  we  were  well  up  in  the  region  of  the 
clouds,  and  from  that  breezy  height  we  looked  down 
and  afar  over  a  wonderful  picture  —  the  Plains  of 
India,  stretching  to  the  horizon,  soft  and  fair,  level 
as  a  floor,  shimmering  with  heat,  mottled  with  cloud- 
shadows,  and  cloven  with  shining  rivers.  Imme 
diately  below  us,  and  receding  down,  down,  down, 
toward  the  valley,  was  a  shaven  confusion  of  hill 
tops,  with  ribbony  roads  and  paths  squirming  and 
snaking  cream-yellow  all  over  them  and  about  them, 
every  curve  and  twist  sharply  distinct. 

At  an  elevation  of  6,000  feet  we  entered  a  thick 
cloud,  and  it  shut  out  the  world  and  kept  it  shut 
out.  We  climbed  1 ,000  feet  higher,  then  began  to 
descend,  and  presently  got  down  to  Darjeeling, 
which  is  6,000  feet  above  the  level  of  the  PTalnsT" 


Following  the  Equator  23! 

We  had  passed  many  a  mountain  village  on  the 
way  up,  and  seen  some  new  kinds  of  natives,  among 
them  many  samples  of  the  fighting  Ghurkas.  They 
are  not  large  men,  but  they  are  strong  and  resolute. 
There  are  no  better  soldiers  among  Britain's  native 
troops.  And  we  had  passed  shoals  of  their  women 
climbing  the  forty  miles  of  steep  road  from  the 
valley  to  their  mountain  homes,  with  tall  baskets  on 
their  backs  hitched  to  their  foreheads  by  a  band, 
and  containing  a  freightage  weighing — I  will  not 
say  how  many  hundreds  of  pounds,  for  the  sum  is 
unbelievable.  These  were  young  women,  and  they 
strode  smartly  along  under  these  astonishing  bur 
dens  with  the  air  of  people  out  for  a  holiday.  I 
was  told  that  a  woman  will  carry  a  piano  on  her 
back  all  the  way  up  the  mountain ;  and  that  more 
than  once  a  woman  had  done  it.  If  these  were  old 
women  I  should  regard  the  Ghurkas  as  no  more 
civilized  than  the  Europeans. 

At  the  railway  station  at  Darjeeling  you  find 
plenty  of  cab-substitutes  —  open  coffins,  in  which 
you  sit,  and  are  then  borne  on  men's  shoulders  up 
the  steep  roads  into  the  town. 

Up  there  we  found  a  fairly  comfortable  hotel,  the 
property  of  an  indiscriminate  and  incoherent  land 
lord,  who  looks  after  nothing,  but  leaves  everything 
to  his  army  of  Indian  servants.  No,  he  does  look 
after  the  bill  —  to  be  just  to  him  —  and  the  tourist 
cannot  do  better  than  follow  his  example.  I  was 
told  by  a  resident  that  the  summit  of  Kinchinjunga 


232  Following  the  Equator 

is  often  hidden  in  the  clouds,  and  that  sometimes 
a  tourist  has  waited  twenty-two  days  and  then 
been  obliged  to  go  away  without  a  sight  of  it.  And 
yet  went  not  disappointed;  for  when  he  got  his 
hotel  bill  he  recognized  that  he  was  now  seeing  the 
highest  thing  in  the  Himalayas.  But  this  is  proba 
bly  a  lie. 

After  lecturing  I  went  to  the  Club  that  night,  and 
that  was  a  comfortable  place.  It  is  loftily  situated, 
and  looks  out  over  a  vast  spread  of  scenery ;  from 
it  you  can  see  where  the  boundaries  of  three 
countries  come  together,  some  thirty  miles  away; 
Thibet  is  one  of  them,  Nepaul  another,  and  I  think 
Herzegovina  was  the  other.  Apparently,  in  every 
town  and  city  in  India  the  gentlemen  of  the  British 
civil  and  military  service  have  a  club ;  sometimes  it 
is  a  palatial  one,  always  it  is  pleasant  and  home 
like.  The  hotels  are  not  always  as  good  as  they 
might  be,  and  the  stranger  who  has  access  to  the 
Club  is  grateful  for  his  privilege  and  knows  how  to 
value  it. 

Next  day  was  Sunday.  Friends  came  in  the  gray 
dawn  with  horses,  and  my  party  rode  away  to  a  dis 
tant  point  where  Kinchinjunga  and  Mount  Everest 
show  up  best,  but  I  stayed  at  home  for  a  private 
view ;  for  it  was  very  cold,  and  I  was  not  acquainted 
with  the  horses,  anyway.  I  got  a  pipe  and  a  few 
blankets  and  sat  for  two  hours  at  the  window,  and 
saw  the  sun  drive  away  the  veiling  gray  and  touch 
up  the  snow-peaks  one  after  another  with  pale  pink 


Following  the  Equator  233 

splashes  and  delicate  washes  of  gold,  and  finally 
flood  the  whole  mighty  convulsion  of  snow- 
mountains  with  a  deluge  of  rich  splendors. 

Kinchinjunga's  peak  was  but  fitfully  visible,  but 
in  the  between  times  it  was  vividly  clear  against  the 
sky  —  away  up  there  in  the  blue  dome  more  than 
28,000  feet  above  sea  level  —  the  loftiest  land  I  had 
ever  seen,  by  12,000  feet  or  more.  It  was  45  miles 
away.  Mount  Everest  is  a  thousand  feet  higher, 
but  it  was  not  a  part  of  that  sea  of  mountains  piled 
up  there  before  me,  so  I  did  not  see  it;  but  I  did 
not  care,  because  I  think  that  mountains  that  are  as 
high  as  that  are  disagreeable. 

I  changed  from  the  back  to  the  front  of  the  house 
and  spent  the  rest  of  the  morning  there,  watching 
the  swarthy  strange  tribes  flock  by  from  their  far 
homes  in  the  Himalayas.  All  ages  and  both  sexes 
were  represented,  and  the  breeds  were  quite  new  to 
me,  though  the  costumes  of  the  Thibetans  made 
them  look  a  good  deal  like  Chinamen.  The  prayer- 
wheel  was  a  frequent  feature.  It  brought  me  near 
to  these  people  and  made  them  seem  kinfolk  of 
mine.  Through  our  preacher  we  do  much  of  our 
praying  by  proxy.  We  do  not  whirl  him  around  a 
stick,  as  they  do,. but  that  is  merely  a  detail.  The 
swarm  swung  briskly  by,  hour  after  hour,  a  strange 
and  striking  pageant.  It  was  wasted  there,  and  it 
seemed  a  pity.  It  should  have  been  sent  streaming 
through  the  cities  of  Europe  or  America,  to  refresh 
eyes  weary  of  the  pale  monotonies  of  the  circus- 


234  Following  the  Equator 

pageant.  These  people  were  bound  for  the  bazar, 
with  things  to  sell.  We  went  down  there,  later,  and 
saw  that  novel  congress  of  the  wild  peoples,  and 
plowed  here  and  there  through  it,  and  concluded 
that  it  would  be  worth  coming  from  Calcutta  to  see, 
even  if  there  were  no  Kinchinjunga  and  Everest. 


CHAPTER   XX. 

There  are  two  times  in  a  man's  life  when  he  should  not  speculate :  when  he 
can't  afford  it,  and  when  he  can. — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

ON  Monday  and  Tuesday  at  sunrise  we  again  had 
fair-to-middling  views  of  the  stupendous  moun 
tains  ;   then,  being  well  cooled  off  and  refreshed,  we 
were  ready  to  chance  the  weather  of  the  lower  world 
once  more. 

We  traveled  up  hill  by  the  regular  train  five  miles 
to  the  summit,  then  changed  to  a  little  canvas- 
canopied  hand-car  for  the  3  5 -mile  descent.  It  was 
the  size  of  a  sleigh,  it  had  six  seats  and  was  so  low 
that  it  seemed  to  rest  on  the  ground.  It  had  no 
engine  or  other  propelling  power,  and  needed  none 
to  help  it  fly  down  those  steep  inclines.  It  only 
needed  a  strong  brake  to  modify  its  flight,  and  it 
had  that.  There  was  a  story  of  a  disastrous  trip 
made  down  the  mountain  once  in  this  little  car  by 
the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Bengal,  when  the  car 
jumped  the  track  and  threw  its  passengers  over  a 
precipice.  It  was  not  true,  but  the  story  had  value 
for  me,  for  it  made  me  nervous,  and  nervousness 
wakes  a  person  up  and  makes  him  alive  and  alert, 

(235) 


236  Following  the  Equator 

and  heightens  the  thrill  of  a  new  and  doubtful  ex 
perience.  The  car  could  really  jump  the  track,  of 
course ;  a  pebble  on  the  track,  placed  there  by 
either  accident  or  malice,  at  a  sharp  curve  where 
one  might  strike  it  before  the  eye  could  discover  it, 
could  derail  the  car  and  fling  it  down  into  India; 
and  the  fact  that  the  lieutenant-governor  had  es 
caped  was  no  proof  that  I  would  have  the  same 
luck.  And  standing  there,  looking  down  upon  the 
Indian  Empire  from  the  airy  altitude  of  7,000  feet, 
it  seemed  unpleasantly  far,  dangerously  far,  to  be 
flung  from  a  hand-car. 

But  after  all,  there  was  but  small  danger  —  for 
me.  What  there  was,  was  for  Mr.  Pugh,  inspector 
of  a  division  of  the  Indian  police,  in  whose  company 
and  protection  we  had  come  from  Calcutta.  He 
had  seen  long  service  as  an  artillery  officer,  was  less 
nervous  than  I  was,  and  so  he  was  to  go  ahead  of 
us  in  a  pilot  hand-car,  with  a  Ghurka  and  another 
native;  and  the  plan  was  that  when  we  should  see 
his  car  jump  over  a  precipice  we  must  put  on  our 
brake  and  send  for  another  pilot.  It  was  a  good 
arrangement.  Also  Mr.  Barnard,  chief  engineer  of 
the  mountain-division  of  the  road,  was  to  take  per 
sonal  charge  of  our  car,  and  he  had  been  down  the 
mountain  in  it  many  a  time. 

Everything  looked  safe.  Indeed,  there  was  but 
one  questionable  detail  left :  the  regular  train  was  to 
follow  us  as  soon  as  we  should  start,  and  it  might 
run  over  us.  Privately,  I  thought  it  would 


Following  the  Equator  237 

The  road  fell  sharply  down  in  front  of  us  and 
went  corkscrewing  in  and  out  around  the  crags  and 
precipices,  down,  down,  forever  down,  suggesting 
nothing  so  exactly  or  so  uncomfortably  as  a  crooked 
toboggan  slide  with  no  end  to  it.  Mr.  Pugh  waved 
his  flag  and  started,  like  an  arrow  from  a  bow,  and 
before  I  could  get  out  of  the  car  we  were  gone  too. 
I  had  previously  had  but  one  sensation  like  the 
shock  of  that  departure,  and  that  was  the  gaspy 
shock  that  took  my  breath  away  the  first  time  that  I 
was  discharged  from  the  summit  of  a  toboggan 
slide.  But  in  both  instances  the  sensation  was 
pleasurable  —  intensely  so ;  it  was  a  sudden  and 
immense  exaltation,  a  mixed  ecstasy  of  deadly  fright 
and  unimaginable  joy.  I  believe  that  this  combina 
tion  makes  the  perfection  of  human  delight. 

The  pilot  car's  flight  down  the  mountain  suggested 
the  swoop  of  a  swallow  that  is  skimming  the  ground, 
so  swiftly  and  smoothly  and  gracefully  it  swept 
down  the  long  straight  reaches  and  soared  in  and 
out  of  the  bends  and  around  the  corners.  We  raced 
after  it,  and  seemed  to  flash  by  the  capes  and  crags 
with  the  speed  of  light;  and  now  and  then  we  almost 
overtook  it  —  and  had  hopes;  but  it  was  only  play 
ing  with  us;  when  we  got  near,  it  released  its  brake, 
made  a  spring  around  a  corner,  and  the  next  time 
it  spun  into  view,  a  few  seconds  later,  it  looked  as 
small  as  a  wheelbarrow,  it  was  so  far  away.  We 
played  with  the  train  in  the  same  way.  We  often 
got  out  to  gather  flowers  or  sit  on  a  precipice  and 

16** 


238  Following  the  Equator 

look  at  the  scenery,  then  presently  we  would  hear  a 
dull  and  growing  roar,  and  the  long  coils  of  the 
train  would  come  into  sight  behind  and  above  us ; 
but  we  did  not  need  to  start  till  the  locomotive  was 
close  down  upon  us  —  then  we  soon  left  it  far  be 
hind.  It  had  to  stop  at  every  station,  therefore  it 
was  not  an  embarrassment  to  us.  Our  brake  was  a 
good  piece  of  machinery ;  it  could  bring  the  car  to 
a  standstill  on  a  slope  as  steep  as  a  house-roof. 

The  scenery  was  grand  and  varied  and  beautiful, 
and  there  was  no  hurry;  we  could  always  stop  and 
examine  it.  There  was  abundance  of  time.  We  did 
not  need  to  hamper  the  train;  if  it  wanted  the  road, 
we  could  switch  off  and  let  it  go  by,  then  overtake 
it  and  pass  it  later.  We  stopped  at  one  place  to  see 
the  Gladstone  Cliff,  a  great  crag  which  the  ages  and 
the  weather  have  sculptured  into  a  recognizable 
portrait  of  the  venerable  statesman.  Mr.  Gladstone 
is  a  stockholder  in  the  road,  and  Nature  began  this 
portrait  ten  thousand  years  ago,  with  the  idea  of 
having  the  compliment  ready  in  time  for  the  event. 

We  saw  a  banyan  tree  which  sent  down  support 
ing  stems  from  branches  which  were  sixty  feet  above 
the  ground.  That  is,  I  suppose  it  was  a  banyan; 
its  bark  resembled  that  of  the  great  banyan  in  the 
botanical  gardens  at  Calcutta,  that  spider-legged 
thing  with  its  wilderness  of  vegetable  columns.  And 
there  were  frequent  glimpses  of  a  totally  leafless  tree 
upon  whose  innumerable  twigs  and  branches  a  cloud 
of  crimson  butterflies  had  lighted  —  apparently.  In 


Following  the  Equator  239 

fact  these  brilliant  red  butterflies  were  flowers,  but 
the  illusion  was  good.  Afterward  in  South  Africa, 
I  saw  another  splendid  effect  made  by  red  flowers. 
This  flower  was  probably  called  the  torchplant- — 
should  have  been  so  named,  anyway.  It  had  a 
slender  stem  several  feet  high,  and  from  its  top 
stood  up  a  single  tongue  of  flame,  an  intensely  red 
flower  of  the  size  and  shape  of  a  small  corn-cob. 
The  stems  stood  three  or  four  feet  apart  all  over  a 
great  hill-slope  that  was  a  mile  long,  and  make  one 
think  of  what  the  Place  de  la  Concorde  would  be  if 
its  myriad  lights  were  red  instead  of  white  and 
yellow. 

A  few  miles  down  the  mountain  we  stopped  half 
an  hour  to  see  a  Thibetan  dramatic  performance.  It 
was  in  the  open  air  on  the  hillside.  The  audience 
was  composed  of  Thibetans,  Ghurkas,  and  other 
unusual  people.  The  costumes  of  the  actors  were 
in  the  last  degree  outlandish,  and  the  performance 
was  in  keeping  with  the  clothes.  To  an  accom 
paniment  of  barbarous  noises  the  actors  stepped  out 
one  after  another  and  began  to  spin  around  with 
immense  swiftness  and  vigor  and  violence,  chanting 
the  while,  and  soon  the  whole  troupe  would  be  spin 
ning  and  chanting  and  raising  the  dust.  They  were 
performing  an  ancient  and  celebrated  historical  play, 
and  a  Chinaman  explained  it  to  me  in  pidjin  English 
as  it  went  along.  The  play  was  obscure  enough 
without  the  explanation;  with  the  explanation 
added,  it  was  opaque.  As  a  drama  this  ancient 


240  Following  the  Equator 

historical  work  of  art  was  defective,  I  thought,  but 
as  a  wild  and  barbarous  spectacle  the  representation 
was  beyond  criticism. 

Far  down  the  mountain  we  got  out  to  look  at  a 
piece  of  remarkable  loop-engineering  —  a  spiral 
where  the  road  curves  upon  itself  with  such  abrupt 
ness  that  when  the  regular  train  came  down  and 
entered  the  loop,  we  stood  over  it  and  saw  the  loco 
motive  disappear  under  our  bridge,  then  in  a  few 
moments  appear  again,  chasing  its  own  tail;  and  we 
saw  it  gain  on  it,  overtake  it,  draw  ahead  past  the 
rear  cars,  and  run  a  race  with  that  end  of  the  train. 
It  was  like  a  snake  swallowing  itself. 

Half-way  down  the  mountain  we  stopped  about 
an  hour  at  Mr.  Barnard's  house  for  refreshments, 
and  while  we  were  sitting  on  the  veranda  looking  at 
the  distant  panorama  of  hills  through  a  gap  in  the 
forest,  we  came  very  near  seeing  a  leopard  kill  a 
calf.*  It  is  a  wild  place  and  lovely.  From  the 
woods  all  about  came  the  songs  of  birds, —  among 
them  the  contributions  of  a  couple  of  birds  which  I 
was  not  then  acquainted  with :  the  brain-fever  bird 
and  the  coppersmith.  The  song  of  the  brain-fever 
demon  starts  on  a  low  but  steadily  rising  key,  and 
is  a  spiral  twist  which  augments  in  intensity  and 
severity  with  each  added  spiral,  growing  sharper  and 
sharper,  and  more  and  more  painful,  more  and  more 
agonizing,  more  and  more  maddening,  intolerable, 
unendurable,  as  it  bores  deeper  and  deeper  and 

*  It  killed  it  the  day  before. 


Following  the  Equator  241 

deeper  into  the  listener's  brain,  until  at  last  the 
brain  fever  comes  as  a  relief  and  the  man  dies.  I 
am  bringing  some  of  these  birds  home  to  America. 
They  will  be  a  great  curiosity  there,  and  it  is  be 
lieved  that  in  our  climate  they  will  multiply  like 
rabbits. 

The  coppersmith  bird's  note  at  a  certain  distance 
away  has  the  ring  of  a  sledge  on  granite;  at  a 
certain  other  distance  the  hammering  has  a  more 
metallic  ring,  and  you  might  think  that  the  bird  was 
mending  a  copper  kettle ;  at  another  distance  it  has 
a  more  woodeny  thump,  but  it  is  a  thump  that  is 
full  of  energy,  and  sounds  just  like  starting  a  bung. 
So  he  is  a  hard  bird  to  name  with  a  single  name ; 
he  is  a  stone-breaker,  coppersmith,  and  bung-starter, 
and  even  then  he  is  not  completely  named,  for  wrhen 
he  is  close  by  you  find  that  there  is  a  soft,  deep, 
melodious  quality  in  his  thump,  and  for  that  no 
satisfying  name  occurs  to  you.  You  will  not  mind 
his  other  notes,  but  when  he  camps  near  enough  for 
you  to  hear  that  one,  you  presently  find  that  his 
measured  and  monotonous  repetition  of  it  is  begin 
ning  to  disturb  you;  next  it  will  weary  you,  soon  it 
will  distress  you,  and  before  long  each  thump  will 
hurt  your  head ;  if  this  goes  on,  you  will  lose  your 
mind  with  the  pain  and  misery  of  it,  and  go  crazy. 
I  am  bringing  some  of  these  birds  home  to  America. 
There  is  nothing  like  them  there.  They  will  be  a 
great  surprise,  and  it  is  said  that  in  a  climate  like 
ours  they  will  surpass  expectation  for  fecundity. 


242  Following  the  Equator 

I  am  bringing  some  nightingales,  too,  and  some 
cue-owls.  I  got  them  in  Italy.  The  song  of  the 
nightingale  is  the  deadliest  known  to  ornithology. 
That  demoniacal  shriek  can  kill  at  thirty  yards.  The 
note  of  the  cue-owl  is  infinitely  soft  and  sweet  — 
soft  and  sweet  as  the  whisper  of  a  flute.  But  pene 
trating —  oh,  beyond  belief;  it  can  bore  through 
boiler-iron.  It  is  a  lingering  note,  and  conies  in 
triplets,  on  the  one  unchanging  key:  hoo-o-oy 
hoo-o-Oy  hoo-o-o ;  then  a  silence  of  fifteen  seconds, 
then  the  triplet  again;  and  so  on,  all  night.  At 
first  it  is  divine;  then  less  so;  then  trying;  then 
distressing;  then  excruciating;  then  agonizing,  and 
at  the  end  of  two  hours  the  listener  is  a  maniac. 

And  so,  presently,  we  took  to  the  hand-car  and 
went  flying  down  the  mountain  again;  flying  and 
stopping,  flying  and  stopping,  till  at  last  we  were  in 
the  plain  once  more  and  stowed  for  Calcutta  in  the 
regular  train.  That  was  the  most  enjoyable  day  I 
have  spent  in  the  earth.  For  rousing,  tingling,  rap 
turous  pleasure  there  is  no  holiday  trip  that  ap 
proaches  the  bird-flight  down  the  Himalayas  in  a 
hand-car.  It  has  no  fault,  no  blemish,  no  lack, 
except  that  there  are  only  thirty-five  miles  of  it  in 
stead  of  five  hundred. 


CHAPTER   XXI. 

She  was  not  quite  what  you  would  call  refined.    She  was  not  quite  what 
you  would  call  unrefined.    She  was  the  kind  of  person  that  keeps  a  parrot. 

—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

SO  far  as  I  am  able  to  judge,  nothing  has  been 
left  undone,  either  by  man  or  Nature,  to  make 
India  the  most  extraordinary  country  that  the  sun 
visits  on  his  round.  Nothing  seems  to  have  been 
forgotten,  nothing  overlooked.  Always,  when  you 
think  you  have  come  to  the  end  of  her  tremendous 
specialties  and  have  finished  hanging  tags  upon  her 
as  the  Land  of  the  Thug,  the  Land  of  the  Plague, 
the  Land  of  Famine,  the  Land  of  Giant  Illusions, 
the  Land  of  Stupendous  Mountains,  and  so  forth, 
another  specialty  crops  up  and  another  tag  is  re 
quired.  I  have  been  overlooking  the  fact  that  India 
is  by  an  unapproachable  supremacy  —  the  Land  of 
Murftrous  Wild  Creatures.  Perhaps  it  will  be 
simplest  to  throw  away  the  tags  and  generalize  her 
with  one  all-comprehensive  name,  as  the  Land  of 
Wonders. 

For  many  years  the   British   Indian   Government 
has    been    trying   to    destroy    the    murderous    wild 
creatures,  and  has   spent  a  great   deal  of  money  in 
F*»  (243) 


244  Following  the  Equator 

the  effort.  The  annual  official  returns  show  that 
the  undertaking  is  a  difficult  one. 

These  returns  exhibit  a  curious  annual  uniformity 
in  results ;  the  sort  of  uniformity  which  you  find  in 
the  annual  output  of  suicides  in  the  world's  capitals, 
and  the  proportions  of  deaths  by  this,  that,  and  the 
other  disease.  You  can  always  come  close  to  fore 
telling  how  many  suicides  will  occur  in  Paris,  Lon 
don,  and  New  York,  next  year,  and  also  how  many 
deaths  will  result  from  cancer,  consumption,  dog- 
bite,  falling  out  of  the  window,  getting  run  over  by 
cabs,  etc.,  if  you  know  the  statistics  of  those  mat 
ters  for  the  present  year.  In  the  same  way,  with 
one  year's  Indian  statistics  before  you,  you  can 
guess  closely  at  how  many  people  were  killed  in  that 
Empire  by  tigers  during  the  previous  year,  and  the 
year  before  that,  and  the  year  before  that,  and  at 
how  many  were  killed  in  each  of  those  years  by 
bears,  how  many  by  wolves,  and  how  many  by 
snakes ;  and  you  can  also  guess  closely  at  how  many 
people  are  going  to  be  killed  each  year  for  the 
coming  five  years  by  each  of  those  agencies.  You 
can  also  guess  closely  at  how  many  of  each  agency 
the  government  is  going  to  kill  each  year  foPthe 
next  five  years. 

I  have  before  me  statistics  covering  a  period  of 
six  consecutive  years.  By  these,  I  know  that  in 
India  the  tiger  kills  something  over  800  persons 
every  year,  and  that  the  government  responds  by 
killing  about  double  as  many  tigers  every  year.  In 


Following  the  Equator  245 

four  of  the  six  years  referred  to,  the  tiger  got  800 
odd ;  in  one  of  the  remaining  two  years  he  got  only 
700,  but  in  the  other  remaining  year  he  made  his 
average  good  by  scoring  917.  He  is  always  sure  of 
his  average.  Any  one  who  bets  that  the  tiger  will 
kill  2,400  people  in  India  in  any  three  consecutive 
years  has  invested  his  money  in  a  certainty;  any 
one  who  bets  that  he  will  kill  2,600  in  any  three 
consecutive  years,  is  absolutely  sure  to  lose. 

Strikingly  uniform  as  are  the  statistics  of  sui 
cide,  they  are  not  any  more  so  than  are  those  of 
the  tiger's  annual  output  of  slaughtered  human 
beings  in  India.  The  government's  work  is  quite 
uniform,  too;  it  about  doubles  the  tiger's  average. 
In  six  years  the  tiger  killed  5,000  persons,  minus 
50;  in  the  same  six  years  10,000  tigers  were  killed, 
minus  400. 

The  wolf  kills  nearly  as  many  people  as  the  tiger 
—  700  a  year  to  the  tiger's  800  odd  —  but  while  he 
is  doing  it,  more  than  5,000  of  his  tribe  fall. 

The  leopard  kills  an  average  of  230  people  per 
year,  but  loses  3,300  of  his  own  mess  while  he  is 
doing  it. 

The  bear  kills  100  people  per  year  at  a  cost  of 
1,250  of  his  own  tribe. 

The  tiger,  as  the  figures  show,  makes  a  very 
handsome  fight  against  man.  But  it  is  nothing  to 
the  elephant's  fight.  The  king  of  beasts,  the  lord 
Df  the  jungle,  loses  four  of  his  mess  per  year,  but 
he  kills  forty-five  persons  to  make  up  for  it. 


246  Following  the  Equator 

But  when  it  comes  to  killing  cattle,  the  lord  of 
the  jungle  is  not  interested.  He  kills  but  100  in  six 
years  —  horses  of  hunters,  no  doubt  —  but  in  the 
same  six  the  tiger  kills  more  than  84,000,  the 
leopard  100,000,  the  bear  4,000,  the  wolf  70,000, 
the  hyena  more  than  13,000,  other  wild  beasts 
27,000,  and  the  snakes  19,000,  a  grand  total  of 
more  than  300,000;  an  average  of  50,000  head  per 
year. 

In  response,  the  government  kills,  in  the  six 
years,  a  total  of  3,201,232  wild  beasts  and  snakes. 
Ten  for  one. 

It  will  be  perceived  that  the  snakes  are  not  much 
interested  in  cattle;  they  kill  only  3,000  odd  pcr 
year.  The  snakes  are  much  more  interested  in 
man.  India  swarms  with  deadly  snakes.  At  the 
head  of  the  list  is  the  cobra,  the  deadliest  known  to 
the  world,  a  snake  whose  bite  kills  where  the  rattle 
snake's  bite  merely  entertains. 

In  India,  the  annual  man-killings  by  snakes  are  as 
uniform,  as  regular,  and  as  forecastable  as  are  the 
tiger-average  and  the  suicide-average.  Any  one 
who  bets  that  in  India,  in  any  three  consecutive 
years,  the  snakes  will  kill  49,500  persons,  will  win 
his  bet;  and  any  one  who  bets  that  in  India  in  any 
three  consecutive  years  the  snakes  will  kill  53,500 
persons,  will  lose  his  bet.  In  India  the  snakes  kill 
17,000  people  a  year;  they  hardly  ever  fall  short  of 
it;  they  as  seldom  exceed  it.  An  insurance  actuary 
could  take  the  Indian  census  tables  and  the  govern- 


Following  the  Equator  247 

ment's  snake  tables  and  tell  you  within  sixpence 
how  much  it  would  be  worth  to  insure  a  man  against 
death  by  snake-bite  there.  If  I  had  a  dollar  for 
every  person  killed  per  year  in  India,  I  would  rather 
have  it  than  any  other  property,  as  it  is  the  only 
property  in  the  world  not  subject  to  shrinkage. 

I  should  like  to  have  a  royalty  on  the  government 
end  of  the  snake  business,  too,  and  am  in  London 
now  trying  to  get  it;  but  when  I  get  it  it  is  not 
going  to  be  as  regular  an  income  as  the  other  will 
be  if  I  get  that ;  I  have  applied  for  it.  The  snakes 
transact  their  end  of  the  business  in  a  more  orderly 
and  systematic  way  than  the  government  transacts 
its  end  of  it,  because  the  snakes  have  had  a  long 
experience  and  know  all  about  the  traffic.  You  can 
make  sure  that  the  government  will  never  kill  fewer 
than  110,000  snakes  in  a  year,  and  that  it  will  never 
quite  reach  300,000  —  too  much  room  for  oscilla 
tion  ;  good  speculative  stock,  to  bear  or  bull,  and 
buy  and  sell  long  and  short,  and  all  that  kind  of 
thing,  but  not  eligible  for  investment  like  the  other. 
The  man  that  speculates  in  the  government's  snake 
crop  wants  to  go  carefully.  I  would  not  advise  a 
man  to  buy  a  single  crop  at  all  —  I  mean  a  crop  of 
futures  —  for  the  possible  wobble  is  something  quite 
extraordinary.  If  he  can  buy  six  future  crops  in  a 
bunch,  seller  to  deliver  1,500,000  altogether,  that  is 
another  matter.  I  do  not  know  what  snakes  are 
worth  now,  but  I  know  what  they  would  be  worth 
then,  for  the  statistics  show  that  the  seller  could  not 


248  Following  the  Equator 

come  within  427,000  of  carrying  out  his  contract. 
However,  I  think  that  a  person  who  speculates  in 
snakes  is  a  fool,  anyway.  He  always  regrets  it 
afterwards. 

To  finish  the  statistics.  In  six  years  the  wild 
beasts  kill  20,000  persons,  and  the  snakes  kill 
103,000.  In  the  same  six  the  government  kills 
1 1073,546  snakes.  Plenty  left. 

There  are  narrow  escapes  in  India.  In  the  very 
jungle  where  I  killed  sixteen  tigers  and  all  those 
elephants,  a  cobra  bit  me,  but  it  got  well;  every  one 
was  surprised.  This  could  not  happen  twice  in  ten 
years,  perhaps.  Usually  death  would  result  in 
fifteen  minutes. 

We  struck  out  westward  or  northwestward  from 
Calcutta  on  an  itinerary  of  a  zigzag  sort,  which 
would  in  the  course  of  time  carry  us  across  India  to 
its  northwestern  corner  and  the  border  of  Afghanis 
tan.  The  first  part  of  the  trip  carried  us  through  a 
great  region  which  was  an  endless  garden  —  miles 
and  miles  of  the  beautiful  flower  from  whose  juices 
comes  the  opium,  and  at  Muzaffurpore  we  were  in 
the  midst  of  the  indigo  culture ;  thence  by  a  branch 
road  to  the  Ganges  at  a  point  near  Dinapore,  and 
by  a  train  which  would  have  missed  the  connection 
by  a  week  but  for  the  thoughtfulness  of  some  British 
officers  who  were  along,  and  who  knew  the  ways  of 
trains  that  are  run  by  natives  without  white  super 
vision.  This  train  stopped  at  every  village ;  for  no 
purpose  connected  with  business,  apparently.  We 


Following  the  Equator  249 

put  out  nothing,  we  took  nothing  aboard.  The  train 
hands  stepped  ashore  and  gossiped  with  friends  a 
quarter  of  an  hour,  then  pulled  out  and  repeated 
this  at  the  succeeding  villages.  We  had  thirty-five 
miles  to  go  and  six  hours  to  do  it  in,  but  it  was 
plain  that  we  were  not  going  to  make  it.  It  was 
then  that  the  English  officers  said  it  was  now  neces 
sary  to  turn  this  gravel  train  into  an  express.  So 
they  gave  the  engine-driver  a  rupee  and  told  him  to 
fly.  It  was  a  simple  remedy.  After  that  we  made 
ninety  miles  an  hour.  We  crossed  the  Ganges  just 
at  dawn,  made  our  connection,  and  went  to 
Benares,  where  we  stayed  twenty-four  hours  and 
inspected  that  strange  and  fascinating  piety-hive 
again ;  then  left  for  Lucknow,  a  city  which  is  per 
haps  the  most  conspicuous  of  the  many  monuments 
of  British  fortitude  and  valor  that  are  scattered  aLout 
the  earth. 

The  heat  was  pitiless,  the  flat  plains  were  destitute 
of  grass,  and,  baked  dry  by  the  sun,  they  were  the 
color  of  pale  dust,  which  was  flying  in  clouds.  But 
it  was  much  hotter  than  this  when  the  relieving 
forces  marched  to  Lucknow  in  the  time  of  the 
Mutiny.  Those  were  the  days  of  138°  in  the  shade. 


CHAPTER   XXII. 

Make  it  a  point  to  do  something  every  day  that  you  don't  want  to  do.    This 
is  the  golden  rule  for  acquiring  the  habit  of  doing  your  duty  without  pain. 
—Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

IT  seems  to  be  settled,  now,  that  among  the  many 
causes  from  which  the  Great  Mutiny  sprang,  the 
main  one  was  the  annexation  of  the  kingdom  of 
Oudh  by  the  East  India  Company  —  characterized 
by  Sir  Henry  Lawrence  as  "the  most  unrighteous 
act  that  was  ever  committed."  In  the  spring  of 
1857,  a  mutinous  spirit  was  observable  in  many  of 
the  native  garrisons,  and  it  grew  day  by  day  and 
spread  wider  and  wider.  The  younger  military  men 
saw  something  very  serious  in  it,  and  would  have 
liked  to  take  hold  of  it  vigorously  and  stamp  it  out 
promptly ;  but  they  were  not  in  authority.  Old  men 
were  in  the  high  places  of  the  army  —  men  who 
should  have  been  retired  long  before,  because  of 
their  great  age  —  and  they  regarded  the  matter  as  a 
thing  of  no  consequence.  They  loved  their  native 
soldiers,  and  would  not  believe  that  anything  could 
move  them  to  revolt.  Everywhere  these  obstinate 
veterans  listened  serenely  to  the  rumbling  of  the 
volcanoes  under  them,  and  said  it  was  nothing. 

(250) 


Following  the  Equator  251 

And  so  the  propagators  of  mutiny  had  everything 
their  own  way.  They  moved  from  camp  to  camp 
undisturbed,  and  painted  to  the  native  soldier  the 
wrongs  his  people  were  suffering  at  the  hands  of  the 
English,  and  made  his  heart  burn  for  revenge. 
They  were  able  to  point  to  two  facts  of  formidable 
value  as  backers  of  their  persuasions:  In  Give's 
day,  native  armies  were  incoherent  mobs,  and  with 
out  effective  arms ;  therefore,  they  were  weak  against 
dive's  organized  handful  of  well-armed  men,  but 
the  thing  was  the  other  way,  now.  The  British 
forces  were  native ;  they  had  been  trained  by  the 
British,  organized  by  the  British,  armed  by  the 
British,  all  the  power  was  in  their  hands  —  they  were 
a  club  made  by  British  hands  to  beat  out  British 
brains  with.  There  was  nothing  to  oppose  their 
mass,  nothing  but  a  few  weak  battalions  of  British 
soldiers  scattered  about  India,  a  force  not  worth 
speaking  of.  This  argument,  taken  alone,  might 
not  have  succeeded,  for  the  bravest  and  best  Indian 
troops  had  a  wholesome  dread  of  the  white  soldier, 
whether  he  was  weak  or  strong;  but  the  agitators 
backed  it  with  their  second  and  best  point — prophecy 
—  a  prophecy  a  hundred  years  old.  The  Indian  is 
open  to  prophecy  at  all  times ;  argument  may  fail  to 
convince  him,  but  not  prophecy.  There  was  a 
prophecy  that  a  hundred  years  from  the  year  of 
that  battle  of  Clive's  which  founded  the  British 
Indian  Empire,  the  British  power  would  be  over 
thrown  and  swept  away  by  the  natives. 


252  Following  the  Equator 

The  Mutiny  broke  out  at  Meerut  on  the  loth  of 
May,  1857,  and  fired  a  train  of  tremendous  historical 
explosions.  Nana  Sahib's  massacre  of  the  sur 
rendered  garrison  of  Cawnpore  occurred  in  June, 
and  the  long  siege  of  Lucknow  began.  The  military 
history  of  England  is  old  and  great,  but  I  think  it 
must  be  granted  that  the  crushing  of  the  Mutiny  is 
the  greatest  chapter  in  it.  The  British  were  caught 
asleep  and  unprepared.  They  were  a  few  thousands, 
swallowed  up  in  an  ocean  of  hostile  populations.  It 
would  take  months  to  inform  England  and  get  help, 
but  they  did  not  falter  or  stop  to  count  the  odds, 
but  with  English  resolution  and  English  devotion 
they  took  up  their  task,  and  went  stubbornly  on  with 
it,  through  good  fortune  and  bad,  and  fought  the 
most  unpromising  fight  that  one  may  read  of  in 
fiction  or  out  of  it,  and  won  it  thoroughly. 

The  Mutiny  broke  out  so  suddenly,  and  spread 
with  such  rapidity  that  there  was  but  little  time  for 
occupants  of  weak  outlying  stations  to  escape  to 
places  of  safety.  Attempts  were  made,  of  course, 
but  they  were  attended  by  hardships  as  bitter  as 
death  in  the  few  cases  which  were  successful ;  for 
the  heat  ranged  between  120  and  138  in  the  shade; 
the  way  led  through  hostile  peoples,  and  food  and 
water  were  hardly  to  be  had.  For  ladies  and  chil 
dren  accustomed  to  ease  and  comfort  and  plenty, 
such  a  journey  must  have  been  a  cruel  experience. 
Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan  quotes  an  example: 

"This  is  what  befell  Mrs.  M ,  the  wife  of  the  surgeon  at  a 


Following  the  Equator  253 

certain  station  on  the  southern  confines  of  the  insurrection.  '  I  heard,' 
she  says,  '  a  number  of  shots  fired,  and,  looking  out,  I  saw  my  husband 
driving  furiously  from  the  mess-house,  waving  his  whip.  I  ran  to  him, 
and,  seeing  a  bearer  with  my  child  in  his  arms,  I  caught  her  up,  and  got 
into  the  buggy.  At  the  mess-house  we  found  all  the  officers  assembled, 
together  with  sixty  sepoys,  who  had  remained  faithful.  We  went  off  in 
one  large  party,  amidst  a  general  conflagration  of  our  late  homes.  We 
reached  the  caravanserai  at  Chattapore  the  next  morning,  and  thence 
started  for  Callinger.  At  this  point  our  sepoy  escort  deserted  us.  We 
were  fired  upon  by  matchlockmen,  and  one  officer  was  shot  dead.  We 
heard,  likewise,  that  the  people  had  risen  at  Callinger,  so  we  returned 

and  walked  back  ten  miles  that  day.     M and  I  carried  the  child 

alternately.  Presently  Mrs.  Smalley  died  of  sunstroke.  We  had  no 
food  among  us.  An  officer  kindly  lent  us  a  horse.  We  were  very 
faint.  The  Major  died,  and  was  buried;  also  the  Sergeant-major  and 
some  women.  The  bandsmen  left  us  on  the  nineteenth  of  June.  We 
were  fired  at  again  by  matchlockmen,  and  changed  direction  for  Allaha 
bad.  Our  party  consisted  of  nine  gentlemen,  two  children,  the  sergeant 
and  his  wife.  On  the  morning  of  the  twentieth,  Captain  Scott  took 
Lottie  on  to  his  horse.  I  was  riding  behind  my  husband,  and  she  was 
so  crushed  between  us.  She  was  two  years  old  on  the  first  of  the 
month.  We  were  both  weak  through  want  of  food  and  the  effect  of  the 

sun.     Lottie  and  I  had  no  head  covering.     M had  a  sepoy's  cap 

I  found  on  the  ground.  Soon  after  sunrise  we  were  followed  by  vil 
lagers  armed  with  clubs  and  spears.  One  of  them  struck  Captain  Scott's 
horse  on  the  leg.  He  galloped  off  with  Lottie,  and  my  poor  husband 
never  saw  his  child  again.  We  rode  on  several  miles,  keeping  away 
from  villages,  and  then  crossed  the  river.  Our  thirst  was  extreme. 

M had  dreadful  cramps,  so  that  I  had  to  hold  him  on  the  horse. 

I  was  very  uneasy  about  him.  The  day  before  I  saw  the  drummer's 
wife  eating  chupatties,  and  asked  her  to  give  a  piece  to  the  child,  which 
she  did.  I  now  saw  water  in  a  ravine.  The  descent  was  steep,  and 

our  only  drinking  vessel  was  M 's   cap.     Our   horse  got  water, 

and  I  bathed  my  neck.  I  had  no  stockings,  and  my  feet  were  torn  and 
blistered.  Two  peasants  came  in  sight,  and  we  were  frightened  and  rode 

off.     The   sergeant    held    our    horse,    and    M put    me   up  and 

mounted.  I  think  he  must  have  got  suddenly  faint,  for  I  fell  and  he 
over  me,  on  the  road,  when  the  horse  started  off.  Some  time  before 
he  said,  and  Barber,  too,  that  he  could  not  live  many  hours.  I  felt  iie 


254  Following  the  Equator 

was  dying  before  we  came  to  the  ravine.  He  told  me  his  wishes  about 
his  children  and  myself,  and  took  leave.  My  brain  seemed  burnt  up. 
No  tears  came.  As  soon  as  we  fell,  the  sergeant  let  go  the  horse,  and 
it  went  off;  so  that  escape  was  cut  off.  We  sat  down  on  the  ground 
waiting  for  death.  Poor  fellow!  he  was  very  weak;  his  thirst  was 
frightful,  and  I  went  to  get  him  water.  Some  villagers  came,  and  took 
my  rupees  and  watch.  I  took  off  my  wedding  ring  and  twisted  it  in  my 
hair,  and  replaced  the  guard.  I  tore  off  the  skirt  of  my  dress  to  bring 
water  in,  but  it  was  no  use,  for  when  I  returned  my  beloved's  eyes  were 
fixed,  and  though  I  called  and  tried  to  restore  him,  and  poured  water 
into  his  mouth,  it  only  rattled  in  his  throat.  He  never  spoke  to  me 
again.  I  held  him  in  my  arms  till  he  sank  gradually  down.  I  felt 
frantic,  but  could  not  cry.  I  was  alone.  I  bound  his  head  and  face  in 
my  dress,  for  there  was  no  earth  to  bury  him.  The  pain  in  my  hands 
and  feet  was  dreadful.  I  went  down  to  the  ravine,  and  sat  in  the  water 
on  a  stone,  hoping  to  get  off  at  night  and  look  for  Lottie.  When  I 
came  back  from  the  water,  I  saw  they  had  not  taken  her  little  watch, 
chain,  and  seals,  so  I  tied  them  under  my  petticoat.  In  an  hour  about 
thirty  villagers  came;  they  dragged  me  out  of  the  ravine,  and  took  off 
my  jacket,  and  found  the  little  chain.  They  then  dragged  me  to  a  vil 
lage,  mocking  me  all  the  way,  and  disputing  as  to  whom  I  was  to  belong 
to.  The  whole  population  came  to  look  at  me.  I  asked  fora  bedstead, 
and  lay  down  outside  the  door  of  a  hut.  They  had  a  dozen  of  cows, 
and  yet  refused  me  milk.  When  night  came,  and  the  village  was  quiet, 
some  old  woman  brought  me  a  leafful  of  rice.  I  was  too  parched  to  eat, 
and  they  gave  me  water.  The  morning  after  a  neighboring  Rajah  sent 
a  palanquin  and  a  horseman  to  fetch  me,  who  told  me  that  a  little  child 
and  three  Sahibs  had  come  to  his  master's  house.'  And  so  the  poor 
mother  found  her  lost  one,  '  greatly  blistered,'  poor  little  creature.  It 
is  not  for  Europeans  in  India  to  pray  that  their  flight  be  not  in  the 
winter." 

In  the  first  days  of  June  the  aged  general,  Sir 
Hugh  Wheeler,  commanding  the  forces  at  Cawnpore, 
was  deserted  by  his  native  troops ;  then  he  moved 
out  of  the  fort  and  into  an  exposed  patch  of  open 
flat  ground  and  built  a  four-foot  mud  wall  around 
it.  He  had  with  him  a  few  hundred  white  soldiers 


Following  the  Equator  255 

and  officers,  and  apparently  more  women  and  chil 
dren  than  soldiers.  He  was  short  of  provisions, 
short  of  arms,  short  of  ammunition,  short  of  military 
wisdom,  short  of  everything  but  courage  and  devo 
tion  to  duty.  The  defense  of  that  open  lot  through 
twenty-one  days  and  nights  of  hunger,  thirst,  Indian 
heat,  and  a  never-ceasing  storm  of  bullets,  bombs, 
and  cannon-balls  —  a  defense  conducted,  not  by  the 
aged  and  infirm  general,  but  by  a  young  officer 
named  Moore  —  is  one  of  the  most  heroic  episodes 
in  history.  When  at  last  the  Nana  found  it  impos 
sible  to  conquer  these  starving  men  and  women  with 
powder  and  ball,  he  resorted  to  treachery,  and  that 
succeeded.  He  agreed  to  supply  them  with  food 
and  send  them  to  Allahabad  in  boats.  Their  mud 
wall  and  their  barracks  were  in  ruins,  their  provisions 
were  at  the  point  of  exhaustion,  they  had  done  all 
that  the  brave  could  do,  they  had  conquered  an 
honorable  compromise,  their  forces  had  been  fear 
fully  reduced  by  casualties  and  by  disease,  they  were 
not  able  to  continue  the  contest  longer.  They  came 
forth  helpless  but  suspecting  no  treachery,  the 
Nana's  host  closed  around  them,  and  at  a  signal 
from  a  trumpet  the  massacre  began.  About  two 
hundred  women  and  children  were  spared  —  for  the 
present  —  but  all  the  men  except  three  or  four  were 
killed.  Among  the  incidents  of  the  massacre  quoted 
by  Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan,  is  this: 

"  When,  after  the  lapse  of  some  twenty  minutes,  the  dead  began  to 
outnumber  the  living; — when  the  fire  slackened,  as  the  marks  grew  few 


256  Following  the  Equator 

and  far  between ;  then  the  troopers  who  had  been  drawn  up  to  the  right 
of  the  temple  plunged  into  the  river,  sabre  between  teeth,  and  pistol  in 
hand.  Thereupon  two  half-caste  Christian  women,  the  wives  of 
musicians  in  the  band  of  the  Fifty-sixth,  witnessed  a  scene  which  should 
not  be  related  at  second-hand.  '  In  the  boat  where  I  was  to  have 
gone,'  says  Mrs.  Bradshaw,  confirmed  throughout  by  Mrs.  Setts,  '  was 
the  schoolmistress  and  twenty-two  misses.  General  Wheeler  came  last 
in  a  palkee.  They  carried  him  into  the  water  near  the  boat.  I  stood 
close  by.  He  said,  'Carry  me  a  little  further  towards  the  boat.'  But  a 
trooper  said,  '  No,  get  out  here.'  As  the  General  got  out  of  the  palkee, 
headforemost,  the  trooper  gave  him  a  cut  with  his  sword  into  the  neck, 
and  he  fell  into  the  water.  My  son  was  killed  near  him.  I  saw  it; 
alas!  alas!  Some  were  stabbed  with  bayonets;  others  cut  down. 
Little  infants  were  torn  in  pieces.  We  saw  it;  we  did;  and  tell  you 
only  what  we  saw.  Other  children  were  stabbed  and  thrown  into  the 
river.  The  schoolgirls  were  burnt  to  death.  I  saw  their  clothes  and 
hair  catch  fire.  In  the  water,  a  few  paces  off,  by  the  next  boat,  we  saw 
the  youngest  daughter  of  Colonel  Williams.  A  sepoy  was  going  to  kill 
her  with  his  bayonet.  She  said,  '  My  father  was  always  kind  to  sepoys.' 
He  turned  away,  and  just  then  a  villager  struck  her  on  the  head  with  a 
club,  and  she  fell  into  the  water.  These  people  likewise  saw  good  Mr. 
Moncrieff,  the  clergyman,  take  a  book  from  his  pocket  that  he  never 
had  leisure  to  open,  and  heard  him  commence  a  prayer  for  mercy  which 
he  was  not  permitted  to  conclude.  Another  deponent  observed  an 
European  making  for  a  drain  like  a  scared  water-rat,  when  some  boat 
men,  armed  with  cudgels,  cut  off  his  retreat,  and  beat  him  down  dead 
into  the  mud." 

The  women  and  children  who  had  been  reserved 
from  the  massacre  were  imprisoned  during  a  fort 
night  in  a  small  building,  one  story  high  —  a 
cramped  place,  a  slightly  modified  Black  Hole  of 
Calcutta.  They  were  waiting  in  suspense;  there 
was  none  who  could  forecast  their  fate.  Meantime 
the  news  of  the  massacre  had  traveled  far,  and  an 
army  of  rescuers  with  Havelock  at  its  head  was  on 
its  way  —  at  least  an  army  which  hoped  to  be  res- 


Following  the  Equator  257 

cuers.  It  was  crossing  the  country  by  forced 
marches,  and  strewing  its  way  with  its  own  dead  — - 
men  struck  down  by  cholera,  and  by  a  heat  which 
reached  135°.  It  was  in  a  vengeful  fury,  and  it 
stopped  for  nothing  —  neither  heat,  nor  fatigue,  nor 
disease,  nor  human  opposition.  It  tore  its  impetuous 
way  through  hostile  forces,  winning  victory  after 
victory,  but  still  striding  on  and  on,  not  halting  to 
count  results.  And  at  last,  after  this  extraordinary 
march,  it  arrived  before  the  walls  of  Cawnpore,  met 
the  Nana's  massed  strength,  delivered  a  crushing 
defeat,  and  entered. 

But  too  late  —  only  a  few  hours  too  late.  For  at 
the  last  moment  the  Nana  had  decided  upon  the 
massacre  of  the  captive  women  and  children,  and 
had  commissioned  three  Mohammedans  and  two 
Hindoos  to  do  the  work.  Sir  G.  O.  Trevelyan  says: 

"Thereupon  the  five  men  entered.  It  was  the  short  gloaming  of 
Hindostan  —  the  hour  when  ladies  take  their  evening  drive.  She  who 
had  accosted  the  officer  was  standing  in  the  doorway.  With  her  were 
the  native  doctor  and  two  Hindoo  menials.  That  much  of  the  business 
might  be  seen  from  the  veranda,  but  all  else  was  concealed  amidst  the 
interior  gloom.  Shrieks  and  scuffling  acquainted  those  without  that  the 
journeymen  were  earning  their  hire.  Survur  Khan  soon  emerged  with 
his  sword  broken  off  at  the  hilt.  He  procured  another  from  the  Nana's 
house,  and  a  few  minutes  after  appeared  again  on  the  same  errand. 
The  third  blade  was  of  better  temper;  or  perhaps  the  thick  of  the  work 
was  already  over.  By  the  time  darkness  had  closed  in,  the  men  came 
forth  and  locked  up  the  house  for  the  night.  Then  the  screams  ceased, 
but  the  groans  lasted  till  morning. 

"The  sun  rose  as  usual.  When  he  had  been  up  nearly  three  hours 
the  five  repaired  to  the  scene  of  their  labors  over  night.  They  were 
attended  by  a  few  sweepers,  who  proceeded  to  transfer  the  contents  of 
the  house  to  a  dry  well  situated  behind  some  trees  which  grew  hard  by 


258  Following  the  Equator 

'The  bodies,'  says  one  who  was  present  throughout, '  were  dragged  out, 
most  of  them  by  the  hair  of  the  head.  Those  who  had  clothing  worth 
taking  were  stripped.  Some  of  the  women  were  alive.  I  cannot  say 
how  many,  but  three  could  speak.  They  prayed  for  the  sake  of  God 
that  an  end  might  be  put  to  their  sufferings.  I  remarked  one  very  stout 
woman,  a  half-caste,  who  was  severely  wounded  in  both  arms,  who  en 
treated  to  be  killed.  She  and  two  or  three  others  were  placed  against 
the  bank  of  the  cut  by  which  bullocks  go  down  in  drawing  water.  The 
dead  were  first  thrown  in.  Yes:  there  was  a  great  crowd  looking  on; 
they  were  standing  along  the  walls  of  the  compound.  They  were  prin 
cipally  city  people  and  villagers.  Yes :  there  were  also  sepoys.  Three 
boys  were  alive.  They  were  fair  children.  The  eldest,  I  think,  must 
have  been  six  or  seven,  and  the  youngest  five  years.  They  were  run 
ning  around  the  well  (where  else  could  they  go  to?)  and  there  was  none 
to  save  them.  No:  none  said  a  word  or  tried  to  save  them.' 

"At  length  the  smallest  of  them  made  an  infantile  attempt  to  get 
away.  The  little  thing  had  been  frightened  past  bearing  by  the  murder 
of  one  of  the  surviving  ladies.  He  thus  attracted  the  observation  of  a 
native  who  flung  him  and  his  companions  down  the  well." 

The  soldiers  had  made  a  march  of  eighteen  days, 
almost  without  rest,  to  save  the  women  and  the 
children,  and  now  they  were  too  late  —  all  were 
dead  and  the  assassin  had  flown.  What  happened 
then,  Trevelyan  hesitated  to  put  into  words.  "  Of 
what  took  place,  the  less  said  is  the  better/' 

Then  he  continues: 

"  But  there  was  a  spectacle  to  witness,  which  might  excuse  much. 
Those,  who,  straight  from  the  contested  field,  wandered  sobbing  through 
the  rooms  of  the  ladies'  house,  saw  what  it  were  well  could  the  out 
raged  earth  have  straightway  hidden.  The  inner  apartment  was  ankle- 
deep  in  blood.  The  plaster  was  scored  with  sword-cuts;  not  high  up  as 
where  men  have  fought,  but  low  down,  and  about  the  corners,  as  if  a 
creature  had  crouched  to  avoid  the  blow.  Strips  of  dresses,  vainly  tied 
around  the  handles  of  the  doors,  signified  the  contrivance  to  which 
feminine  despair  had  resorted  as  a  means  of  keeping  out  the  murderers. 
Broken  combs  were  there,  and  the  frills  of  children's  trousers,  and  torn 


(If 


Following  the  Equator  259 

cuffs  and  pinafores,  and  little  round  hats,  and  one  or  two  shoes  with 
burst  latchets,  and  one  or  two  daguerreotype  cases  with  cracked  glasses. 
An  officer  picked  up  a  few  curls,  preserved  in  a  bit  of  cardboard,  and 
marked  '  Ned's  hair,  with  love ' ;  but  around  were  strewn  locks,  some 
near  a  yard  in  length,  dissevered,  not  as  a  keepsake,  by  quite  other 
scissors." 

The  battle  of  Waterloo  was  fought  on  the  i8th  of 
June,  1815.  I  do  not  state  this  fact  as  a  reminder 
to  the  reader,  but  as  news  to  him.  For  a  forgotten 
fact  is  news  when  it  comes  again.  Writers  of  books 
have  the  fashion  of  whizzing  by  vast  and  renowned 
historical  events  with  the  remark,  "The  details  of 
this  tremendous  episode  are  too  familiar  to  the  reader 
to  need  repeating  here."  They  know  that  that  is 
not  true.  It  is  a  low  kind  of  flattery.  They  know 
that  the  reader  has  forgotten  every  detail  of  it,  and 
that  nothing  of  the  tremendous  event  is  left  in  his 
mind  but  a  vague  and  formless  luminous  smudge. 
Aside  from  the  desire  to  flatter  the  reader,  they  have 
another  reason  for  making  the  remark  —  two  reasons, 
indeed.  They  do  not  remember  the  details  them 
selves,  and  do  not  want  the  trouble  of  hunting  them 
up  and  copying  them  out;  also,  they  are  afraid  that 
if  they  search  them  out  and  print  them  they  will  be 
scoffed  at  by  the  book-reviewers  for  retelling  those 
worn  old  things  which  are  familiar  to  everybody. 
They  should  not  mind  the  reviewer's  jeer ;  he  doesn't 
remember  any  of  the  worn  old  things  until  the  book 
\vhich  he  is  reviewing  has  retold  them  to  him. 

I  have   made   the   quoted   remark   myself,  at  one 
time  and  another,  but  I  was   not  doing   it  to  flatter 


260  Following  the  Equator 

the  reader ;  I  was  merely  doing  it  to  save  work.  If 
I  had  known  the  details  without  brushing  up,  I 
would  have  put  them  in;  but  I  didn't,  and  I  did  not 
want  the  labor  of  posting  myself;  so  I  said,  "The 
details  of  this  tremendous  episode  are  too  familiar 
to  the  reader  to  need  repeating  here."  I  do  not  like 
that  kind  of  a  lie;  still,  it  does  save  work. 

I  am  not  trying  to  get  out  of  repeating  the  details 
of  the  Siege  of  Lucknow  in  fear  of  the  reviewer;  I 
am  not  leaving  them  out  in  fear  that  they  would  not 
interest  the  reader;  I  am  leaving  them  out  partly  to 
save  work;  mainly  for  lack  of  room.  It  is  a  pity, 
too ;  for  there  is  not  a  dull  place  anywhere  in  the 
great  story. 

Ten  days  before  the  outbreak  (May  loth)  of  the 
Mutiny,  all  was  serene  at  Lucknow,  the  huge  capital 
of  Oudh,  the  kingdom  which  had  recently  been  seized 
by  the  East  India  Company.  There  was  a  great 
garrison,  composed  of  about  7,000  native  troops 
and  between  700  and  800  whites.  These  white 
soldiers  and  their  families  were  probably  the  only 
people  of  their  race  there ;  at  their  elbow  was  that 
swarming  population  of  warlike  natives,  a  race  of 
born  soldiers,  brave,  daring,  and  fond  of  fighting. 
On  high  ground  just  outside  the  city  stood  the 
palace  of  that  great  personage,  the  Resident,  the 
representative  of  British  power  and  authority.  It 
stood  in  the  midst  of  spacious  grounds,  with  its  due 
complement  of  outbuildings,  and  the  grounds  were 
enclosed  by  a  wall  —  a  wall  not  for  defense,  but  for 


Following  the  Equator  261 

privacy.  The  mutinous  spirit  was  in  the  air,  but 
the  whites  were  not  afraid,  and  did  not  feel  much 
troubled. 

Then  came  the  outbreak  at  Meerut,  then  the  cap 
ture  of  Delhi  by  the  mutineers ;  in  June  came  the 
three-weeks  leaguer  of  Sir  Hugh  Wheeler  in  his 
open  lot  at  Cawnpore  —  40  miles  distant  from  Luck- 
now  —  then  the  treacherous  massacre  of  that  gallant 
little  garrison ;  and  now  the  great  revolt  was  in  full 
flower,  and  the  comfortable  condition  of  things  at 
Lucknow  was  instantly  changed. 

There  was  an  outbreak  there,  and  Sir  Henry 
Lawrence  marched  out  of  the  Residency  on  the  3Oth 
of  June  to  put  it  down,  but  was  defeated  with  heavy 
loss,  and  had  difficulty  in  getting  back  again.  That 
night  the  memorable  siege  of  the  Residency  —  called 
the  siege  of  Lucknow  —  began.  Sir  Henry  was 
killed  three  days  later,  and  Brigadier  Inglis  suc 
ceeded  him  in  command. 

Outside  of  the  Residency  fence  was  an  immense 
host  of  hostile  and  confident  native  besiegers ;  in 
side  it  were  480  loyal  native  soldiers,  730  white 
ones,  and  500  women  and  children.  In  those  days 
the  English  garrisons  always  managed  to  hamper 
themselves  sufficiently  with  women  and  children. 

The  natives  established  themselves  in  houses 
close  at  hand  and  began  to  rain  bullets  and  cannon- 
balls  into  the  Residency;  and  this  they  kept  up, 
night  and  day,  during  four  months  and  a  half,  the 
little  garrison  industriously  replying  all  the  time. 


262  Following  the  Equator 

The  women  and  children  soon  became  so  used  to 
the  roar  of  the  guns  that  it  ceased  to  disturb  their 
sleep.  The  children  imitated  siege  and  defense  in 
their  play.  The  women  —  with  any  pretext,  or  with 
none  —  would  sally  out  into  the  storm-swept  grounds. 

The  defense  was  kept  up  week  after  week,  with 
stubborn  fortitude,  in  the  midst  of  death,  which 
came  in  many  forms  —  by  bullet,  smallpox,  cholera, 
and  by  various  diseases  induced  by  unpalatable  and 
insufficient  food,  by  the  long  hours  of  wearying  and 
exhausting  overwork  in  the  daily  and  nightly  battle 
in  the  oppressive  Indian  heat,  and  by  the  broken 
rest  caused  by  the  intolerable  pest  of  mosquitoes, 
flies,  mice,  rats,  and  fleas. 

Six  weeks  after  the  beginning  of  the  siege  more 
than  one-half  of  the  original  force  of  white  soldiers 
was  dead,  and  close  upon  three-fifths  of  the  original 
native  force. 

But  the  fighting  went  on  just  the  same.  The 
enemy  mined,  the  English  counter-mined,  and,  turn 
about,  they  blew  up  each  other's  posts.  The  Resi 
dency  grounds  were  honeycombed  with  the  enemy's 
tunnels.  Deadly  courtesies  were  constantly  ex 
changed  —  sorties  by  the  English  in  the  night ; 
rushes  by  the  enemy  in  the  night  —  rushes  whose 
purpose  was  to  breach  the  walls  or  scale  them ; 
rushes  which  cost  heavily,  and  always  failed. 

The  ladies  got  used  to  all  the  horrors  of  war  — 
the  shrieks  of  mutilated  men,  the  sight  of  blood  and 
death.  Lady  Inglis  makes  this  mention  in  her  diary : 


Following  the  Equator  263 

"  Mrs.  Bruere's  nurse  was  carried  past  our  door  to-day,  wounded  in 
the  eye.  To  extract  the  bullet  it  was  found  necessary  to  take  out  the  eye — • 
a  fearful  operation.  Her  mistress  held  her  while  it  was  performed." 

The  first  relieving  force  failed  to  relieve.  It  was 
under  Havelock  and  Outram,  and  arrived  when  the 
siege  had  been  going  on  for  three  months.  It 
fought  its  desperate  way  to  Lucknow,  then  fought 
its  way  through  the  city  against  odds  of  a  hundred 
to  one,  and  entered  the  Residency ;  but  there  was 
not  enough  left  of  it,  then,  to  do  any  good.  It 
lost  more  men  in  its  last  fight  than  it  found  in  the 
Residency  when  it  got  in.  It  became  captive  itself. 

The  fighting  and  starving  and  dying  by  bullets 
and  disease  went  steadily  on.  Both  sides  fought 
with  energy  and  industry.  Captain  Birch  puts  this 
striking  incident  in  evidence.  He  is  speaking  of  the 
third  month  of  the  siege : 

"  As  an  instance  of  the  heavy  firing  brought  to  bear  on  our  position 
this  month  may  be  mentioned  the  cutting  down  of  the  upper  story  of  a 
brick  building  simply  by  musketry  firing.  This  building  was  in  a  most 
exposed  position.  All  the  shots  which  just  missed  the  top  of  the  ram 
part  cut  into  the  dead  wall  pretty  much  in  a  straight  line,  and  at  length 
cut  right  through  and  brought  the  upper  story  tumbling  down.  The 
upper  structure  on  the  top  of  the  brigade  mess  also  fell  in.  The  Resi 
dency  house  was  a  wreck.  Captain  Anderson's  post  had  long  ago  been 
knocked  down,  and  Innes'  post  also  fell  in.  These  two  were  riddled 
with  round  shot.  As  many  as  200  were  picked  up  by  Colonel  Masters." 

The  exhausted  garrison  fought  doggedly  on  all 
through  the  next  month  —  October.  Then,  Novem 
ber  2d,  news  came — Sir  Colin  Campbell's  relieving 
force  would  soon  be  on  its  way  from  Cawnpore. 

On  the  1 2th  the  boom  of  his  guns  was  heard. 


264  Following  the  Equator 

On  the  1 3th  the  sounds  came  nearer  —  he  was 
slowly,  but  steadily,  cutting  his  way  through,  storm 
ing  one  stronghold  after  another. 

On  the  1 4th  he  captured  the  Martiniere  College, 
and  ran  up  the  British  flag  there.  It  was  seen  from 
the  Residency. 

Next  he  took  the  Dilkoosha. 

On  the  1 7th  he  took  the  former  mess-house  of 
the  32d  regiment  —  a  fortified  building,  and  very 
strong.  "A  most  exciting,  anxious  day,"  writes 
Lady  Inglis  in  her  diary.  "About  4  P.  M.,  two 
strange  officers  walked  through  our  yard,  leading 
their  horses" — and  by  that  sign  she  knew  that 
communication  was  established  between  the  forces, 
that  the  relief  was  real,  this  time,  and  that  the  long 
siege  of  Lucknow  was  ended. 

The  last  eight  or  ten  miles  of  Sir  Colin  Campbell's 
march  was  through  seas  of  blood.  The  weapon 
mainly  used  was  the  bayonet,  the  righting  was  des 
perate.  The  way  was  mile-stoned  with  detached 
strong  buildings  of  stone,  fortified,  and  heavily 
garrisoned,  and  these  had  to  be  taken  by  assault. 
Neither  side  asked  for  quarter,  and  neither  gave  it. 
At  the  Secundrabagh,  where  nearly  two  thousand  of 
the  enemy  occupied  a  great  stone  house  in  a  garden, 
the  work  of  slaughter  was  continued  until  every  man 
was  killed.  That  is  a  sample  of  the  character  of 
that  devastating  march. 

There  were  but  few  trees  in  the  plain  at  that  time, 
and  from  the  Residency  the  progress  of  the  march, 


v  ,[>^         "•• 

Following  the  Equator  265 

step  by  step,  victory  by  victory,  could  be  noted; 
the  ascending  clouds  of  battle-smoke  marked  the 
way  to  the  eye,  and  the  thunder  of  the  guns  marked 
it  to  the  ear. 

Sir  Colin  Campbell  had  not  come  to  Lucknow  to 
hold  it,  but  to  save  the  occupants  of  the  Residency, 
and  bring  them  away.  Four  or  five  days  after  his 
arrival  the  secret  evacuation  by  the  troops  took 
place,  in  the  middle  of  a  dark  night,  by  the  principal 
gate  (the  Bailie  Guard).  The  two  hundred  women 
and  two  hundred  and  fifty  children  had  been  previ 
ously  removed.  Captain  Birch  says: 

"  And  now  commenced  a  movement  of  the  most  perfect  arrangement 
and  successful  generalship  —  the  withdrawal  of  the  whole  of  the  various 
forces,  a  combined  movement  requiring  the  greatest  care  and  skill. 
First,  the  garrison  in  immediate  contact  with  the  enemy  at  the  furthest 
extremity  of  the  Residency  position  was  marched  out.  Every  other  gar 
rison  in  turn  fell  in  behind  it,  and  so  passed  out  through  the  Bailie 
Guard  gate,  till  the  whole  of  our  position  was  evacuated.  Then  Have- 
lock's  force  was  similarly  withdrawn,  post  by  post,  marching  in  rear  of 
our  garrison.  After  them  in  turn  came  the  forces  of  the  Commander- 
in-Chief,  which  joined  on  in  the  rear  of  Havelock's  force.  Regiment 
by  regiment  was  withdrawn  with  the  utmost  order  and  regularity.  The 
whole  operation  resembled  the  movement  of  a  telescope.  Stern  silence 
was  kept,  and  the  enemy  took  no  alarm." 

Lady  Inglis,  referring  to  her  husband  and  to 
General  Sir  James  Outram,  sets  down  the  closing 
detail  of  this  impressive  midnight  retreat,  in  dark 
ness  and  by  stealth,  of  this  shadowy  host  through 
the  gate  which  it  had  defended  so  long  and  so  well  : 

"At  twelve  precisely  they  marched  out,  John  and  Sir  James  Outram 
remaining  till  all  had  passed,  and  then  they  took  off  their  hats  to  the 
Bailie  Guard,  the  scene  of  as  noble  a  defense  as  I  think  history  will  evel 
have  to  relate." 


CHAPTER   XXIII. 

Don't  part  with  your  illusions.  When  they  are  gone  you  may  still  exist  but 
you  have  ceased  to  live. —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

Often,  the  surest  way  to  convey  misinformation  is  to  tell  the  strict  truth. 
—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WE  were  driven  over  Sir  Colin  Campbell's  route 
by  a  British  officer,  and  when  I  arrived  at  the 
Residency  I  was  so  familiar  with  the  road  that  I 
could  have  led  a  retreat  over  it  myself ;  but  the 
compass  in  my  head  has  been  out  of  order  from  my 
birth,  and  so,  as  soon  as  I  was  within  the  battered 
Bailie  Guard  and  turned  about  to  review  the  march 
and  imagine  the  relieving  forces  storming  their  way 
along  it,  everything  was  upside  down  and  wrong  end 
first  in  a  moment,  and  I  was  never  able  to  get 
straightened  out  again.  And  now,  when  I  look  at 
the  battle-plan,  the  confusion  remains.  In  me  the 
east  was  born  west,  the  battle-plans  which  have  the 
east  on  the  right-hand  side  are  of  no  use  to  me. 

The  Residency  ruins  are  draped  with  flowering 
vines,  and  are  impressive  and  beautiful.  They  and 
the  grounds  are  sacred  now,  and  will  suffer  no  neg 
lect  nor  be  profaned  by  any  sordid  or  commercial 

use    while    the    British    remain    masters    of    India, 

(266)*" 


Following  the  Equator  267 

Within   the   grounds   are  buried   the  dead  who  gave 
up  their  lives  there  in  the  long  siege. 

After  a  fashion,  I  was  able  to  imagine  the  fiery 
storm  that  raged  night  and  day  over  the  place  during 
so  many  months,  and  after  a  fashion  I  could  imagine 
the  men  moving  through  it,  but  I  could  not  satisfac 
torily  place  the  200  women,  and  I  could  do  nothing 
at  all  with  the  250  children.  I  knew  by  Lady  Inglis' 
diary  that  the  children  carried  on  their  small  affairs 
very  much  as  if  blood  and  carnage  and  the  crash 
and  thunder  of  a  siege  were  natural  and  proper 
features  of  nursery  life,  and  I  tried  to  realize  it;  but 
when  her  little  Johnny  came  rushing,  all  excite 
ment,  through  the  din  and  smoke,  shouting,  "  Oh, 
mamma,  the  white  hen  has  laid  an  egg!"  I  saw 
that  I  could  not  do  it.  Johnny's  place  was  under 
the  bed.  I  could  imagine  him  there,  because  I 
could  imagine  myself  there;  and  I  think  I  should 
not  have  been  interested  in  a  hen  that  was  laying  an 
egg ;  my  interest  would  have  been  with  the  parties  that 
were  laying  the  bombshells.  I  sat  at  dinner  with 
one  of  those  children  in  the  Club's  Indian  palace, 
and  I  knew  that  all  through  the  siege  he  was  perfect 
ing  his  teething  and  learning  to  talk ;  and  while  to 
me  he  was  the  most  impressive  object  in  Lucknow 
after  the  Residency  ruins,  I  was  not  able  to  imagine 
what  his  life  had  been  during  that  tempestuous  in 
fancy  of  his,  nor  what  sort  of  a  curious  surprise  it 
must  have  been  to  him  to  be  marched  suddenly  out 
into  a  strange  dumb  world  where  there  wasn't  any 


268  Following  the  Equator 

noise,  and  nothing  going  on.  He  was  only  forty- 
one  when  I  saw  him,  a  strangely  youthful  link  to 
connect  the  present  with  so  ancient  an  episode  as  the 
Great  Mutiny. 

By  and  by  we  saw  Cawnpore,  and  the  open  lot 
which  was  the  scene  of  Moore's  memorable  defense, 
and  the  spot  on  the  shore  of  the  Ganges  where  the 
massacre  of  the  betrayed  garrison  occurred,  and  the 
small  Indian  temple  whence  the  bugle-signal  notified 
the  assassins  to  fall  on.  This  latter  was  a  lonely 
spot,  and  silent.  The  sluggish  river  drifted  by, 
almost  currentless.  It  was  dead  low  water,  narrow 
channels  with  vast  sandbars  between,  all  the  way 
across  the  wide  bed ;  and  the  only  living  thing  in 
sight  was  that  grotesque  and  solemn  bald-headed 
bird,  the  Adjutant,  standing  on  his  six-foot  stilts, 
solitary  on  a  distant  bar,  with  his  head  sunk  between 
his  shoulders,  thinking;  thinking  of  his  prize,  I  sup 
pose  —  the  dead  Hindoo  that  lay  awash  at  his  feet, 
and  whether  to  eat  him  alone  or  invite  friends.  He 
and  his  prey  were  a  proper  accent  to  that  mournful 
place.  They  were  in  keeping  with  it,  they  empha 
sized  its  loneliness  and  its  solemnity. 

And  we  saw  the  scene  of  the  slaughter  of  the 
helpless  women  and  children,  and  also  the  costly 
memorial  that  is  built  over  the  well  which  contains 
their  remains.  The  Black  Hole  of  Calcutta  is  gone, 
but  a  more  reverent  age  is  come,  and  whatever  re 
membrancer  still  exists  of  the  moving  and  heroic 
sufferings  and  achievements  of  the  garrisons  of 


Following  the  Equator  269 

Lucknow  and  Cawnpore  will  be  guarded  and  pre 
served. 

In  Agra  and  its  neighborhood,  and  afterward  at 
Delhi,  we  saw  forts,  mosques,  and  tombs,  which 
were  built  in  the  great  days  of  the  Mohammedan 
emperors,  and  which  are  marvels  of  cost,  magnitude, 
and  richness  of  materials  and  ornamentation,  crea 
tions  of  surpassing  grandeur,  wonders  which  do 
indeed  make  the  like  things  in  the  rest  of  the  world 
seem  tame  and  inconsequential  by  comparison.  I 
am  not  purposing  to  describe  them.  By  good 
fortune  I  had  not  read  too  much  about  them,  and 
therefore  was  able  to  get  a  natural  and  rational  focus 
upon  them,  with  the  result  that  they  thrilled,  blessed, 
and  exalted  me.  But  if  I  had  previously  overheated 
my  imagination  by  drinking  too  much  pestilential 
literary  hot  Scotch,  I  should  have  suffered  disap 
pointment  and  sorrow. 

I  mean  to  speak  of  only  one  of  these  many  world- 
renowned  buildings,  the  Taj  Mahal,  the  most  cele 
brated  construction  in  the  earth.  I  had  read  a  great 
deal  too  much  about  it.  I  saw  it  in  the  daytime,  I 
saw  it  in  the  moonlight,  I  saw  it  near  at  hand,  I  saw 
it  from  a  distance ;  and  I  knew  all  the  time,  that  of 
its  kind  it  was  the  wonder  of  the  world,  with  no 
competitor  now  and  no  possible  future  competitor ; 
and  yet,  it  was  not  my  Taj.  My  Taj  had  been  built 
by  excitable  literary  people ;  it  was  solidly  lodged  in 
my  head,  and  I  could  not  blast  it  out. 

I  wish   to   place  before   the   reader   some   of  the 

18** 


270  Following  the  Equator 

usual  descriptions  of  the  Taj,  and  ask  him  to  take 
note  of  the  impressions  left  in  his  mind.  These 
descriptions  do  really  state  the  truth  —  as  nearly  as 
the  limitations  of  language  will  allow.  But  language  is 
a  treacherous  thing,  a  most  unsure  vehicle,  and  it  can 
seldom  arrange  descriptive  words  in  such  a  way  that 
they  will  not  inflate  the  facts  —  by  help  of  the  reader's 
imagination,  which  is  always  ready  to  take  a  hand, 
and  work  for  nothing,  and  do  the  bulk  of  it  at  that. 
I  will  begin  with  a  few  sentences  from  the  excel 
lent  little  local  guide-book  of  Mr.  Satya  Chandra 
Mukerji.  I  take  them  from  here  and  there  in  his 
description : 

*'  The  inlaid  work  of  the  Taj  and  the  flowers  and  petals  that  are  to  be 
found  on  all  sides  on  the  surface  of  the  marble  evince  a  most  delicate 
touch." 

That  is  true. 

"  The  inlaid  work,  the  marble,  the  flowers,  the  buds,  the  leaves,  the 
petals,  and  the  lotus  stems  are  almost  without  a  rival  in  the  whole  of  the 
civilized  world." 

"  The  work  of  inlaying  with  stones  and  gems  is  found  in  the  highest 
perfection  in  the  Taj." 

Gems,  inlaid  flowers,  buds,  and  leaves  to  be  found 
on  all  sides.  What  do  you  see  before  you?  Is  the 
fairy  structure  growing?  Is  it  becoming  a  jewel 
casket  ? 

"The  whole  of  the  Taj  produces  a  wonderful  effect  that  is  equally 
sublime  and  beautiful." 

Then  Sir  William  Wilson  Hunter : 

"The  Taj  Mahal  with  its  beautiful  domes,  'a  dream  of  marble,' 
rises  on  the  river  bank." 


Following  the  Equator  271 

"The  materials  are  white  marble  and  red  sandstone.'* 
"  The  complexity  of  its  design  and  the  delicate  intricacy  of  the  work* 
manship  baffle  description." 

Sir  William  continues.  I  will  italicize  some  of 
his  words : 

"The  mausoleum  stands  on  a  raised  marble  platform,  at  each  of 
whose  corners  rises  a  tall  and  slender  minaret  of  graceful  proportions 
and  of  exquisite  beauty.  Beyond  the  platform  stretch  the  two  wings, 
one  of  which  is  itself  a  mosque  of  great  architectural  merit.  In  the 
center  of  the  whole  design  the  mausoleum  occupies  a  square  of  186  feet, 
with  the  angles  deeply  truncated  so  as  to  form  an  unequal  octagon.  The 
main  feature  in  this  central  pile  is  th^  great  dome,  which  swells  upward 
to  nearly  two-thirds  of  a  sphere  and  tapers  at  its  extremity  into  a  pointed 
spire  crowned  by  a  crescent.  Beneath  it  an  enclosure  of  marble  trellis- 
work  surrounds  the  tomb  of  the  princess  and  of  her  husband,  the 
Emperor.  Each  corner  of  the  mausoleum  is  covered  by  a  similar 
though  much  smaller  dome  erected  on  a  pediment  pierced  with  graceful 
Saracenic  arches.  Light  is  admitted  into  the  interior  through  a  double 
screen  of  pierced  marble,  which  tempers  the  glare  of  an  Indian  sky, 
while  its  whiteness  prevents  the  mellow  effect  from  degenerating  into 
gloom.  The  internal  decorations  consist  of  inlaid  work  in  precious 
stones,  such  as  agate,  jasper •,  etc.,  with  which  every  spandrel  or  salient 
point  in  the  architecture  is  richly  fretted.  Brown  and  violet  marble  is 
also  freely  employed  in  wreaths,  scrolls,  and  lintels  to  relieve  the 
monotony  of  white  wall.  In  regard  to  color  and  design,  the  interior  of 
the  Taj  may  rank  first  in  the  world  for  purely  decorative  workman 
ship;  while  the  perfect  symmetry  of  its  exterior,  once  seen,  can  never  be 
forgotten,  nor  the  aerial  grace  of  its  domes,  rising  like  marble  bubbles 
into  the  clear  sky.  The  Taj  represents  the  most  highly  elaborated  stage 
of  ornamentation  reached  by  the  Indo-Mohammedan  builders,  the  stage 
in  which  the  architect  ends  and  fat  jeweler  begins.  In  its  magnificent 
gateway  the  diagonal  ornamentation  at  the  corners,  which  satisfied  the 
designers  of  the  gateways  of  Itimad-ud-doulah  and  Sikandra  mausoleums, 
is  superseded  by  fine  marble  cables,  in  bold  twists,  strong  and  hand 
some.  The  triangular  insertions  of  white  marble  and  large  flowers  have 
in  like  manner  given  place  to  fine  inlaid  work.  Firm  perpendicular 
lines  in  black  marble  with  well-proportioned  panels  of  the  same  material 
are  effectively  used  in  the  interior  of  the  gateway.  On  its  top  the  Hindu 


272  Following  the  Equator 

brackets  and  monolithic  architraves  of  Sikandra  are  replaced  by  Moorish 
carped  arches,  usually  single  blocks  of  red  sandstone,  in  the  kiosks  and 
pavilions  which  adorn  the  roof.  From  the  pillared  pavilions  a  magnifi 
cent  view  is  obtained  of  the  Taj  gardens  below,  with  the  noble  Jumna 
river  at  their  further  end,  and  the  city  and  fort  of  Agra  in  the  distance. 
From  this  beautiful  and  splendid  gateway  one  passes  up  a  straight  alley 
shaded  by  evergreen  trees  cooled  by  a  broad  shallow  piece  of  water 
running  along  the  middle  of  the  path  to  the  Taj  itself.  The  Taj  is 
entirely  of  marble  and  gems.  The  red  sandstone  of  the  other  Moham 
medan  buildings  has  entirely  disappeared,  or  rather  the  red  sandstone 
which  used  to  form  the  thickness  of  the  walls  is  in  the  Taj  itself  over 
laid  completely  with  white  marble,  and  the  white  marble  is  itself  inlaid 
•with  precious  stones  arranged  in  lovely  patterns  of  flowers.  A  feeling 
of  purity  impresses  itself  on  the  eye  and  the  mind  from  the  absence  of 
the  coarser  material  which  forms  so  invariable  a  material  in  Agra  archi 
tecture.  The  lower  wall  and  panels  are  covered  with  tulips,  oleanders, 
and  full-blown  lilies,  in  flat  carving  on  the  white  marble;  and  although 
the  inlaid  work  of  flowers  done  in  gems  is  very  brilliant  when  looked 
at  closely,  there  is  on  the  whole  but  little  color,  and  the  all-prevailing 
sentiment  is  one  of  whiteness,  silence,  and  calm.  The  whiteness  is 
broken  only  by  the  fine  color  of  the  inlaid  gems,  by  lines  in  black 
marble,  and  by  delicately  written  inscriptions,  also  in  black,  from  the 
Koran.  Under  the  dome  of  the  vast  mausoleum  a  high  and  beautiful 
screen  of  open  tracery  in  white  marble  rises  around  the  two  tombs,  or 
rather  cenotaphs  of  the  emperor  and  his  princess;  and  in  this  marvel  of 
marble  the  carving  has  advanced  from  the  old  geometrical  patterns  to  a 
trellis-work  of  flowers  and  foliage,  handled  with  great  freedom  and 
spirit.  The  two  cenotaphs  in  the  center  of  the  exquisite  enclosure  have 
no  carving  except  the  plain  Kalamdan  or  oblong  pen-box  on  the  tomb 
of  Emperor  Shah  Jehan.  But  both  cenotaphs  are  inlaid  with  flowers 
made  of  costly  gems,  and  with  the  ever  graceful  oleander  scroll," 

Bayard  Taylor,  after  describing  the  details  of  the 
Taj,  goes  on  to  say: 

"  On  both  sides  the  palm,  the  banyan,  and  the  feathery  bamboo 
mingle  their  foliage;  the  song  of  birds  meets  your  ears,  and  the  odor  of 
roses  and  lemon  flowers  sweetens  the  air.  Down  such  a  vista  and  over 
such  a  foreground  rises  the  Taj.  There  is  no  mystery,  no  sense  of  partial 
failure  about  the  Taj.  A  thing  of  perfect  beauty  and  of  absolute  flnish 


/TV  r.Jf 


Following  the  Equator  273 

in  every  detail,  it  might  pass  for  the  work  of  genii  who  knew  naught  of 
the  weaknesses  and  ills  with  which  mankind  are  beset." 

All  of  these  details  are  true.  But,  taken  together, 
they  state  a  falsehood  —  to  you.  You  cannot  add 
them  up  correctly.  Those  writers  know  the  values 
of  their  words  and  phrases,  but  to  you  the  words 
and  phrases  convey  other  and  uncertain  values.  To 
those  writers  their  phrases  have  values  which  I  think 
I  am  now  acquainted  with ;  and  for  the  help  of  the 
reader  I  will  here  repeat  certain  of  those  words  and 
phrases,  and  follow  them  with  numerals  which  shall 
represent  those  values  —  then  we  shall  see  the  differ 
ence  between  a  writer's  ciphering  and  a  mistaken 
reader's: 

Precious  stones,  suck  as  agate,  jasper,  etc. — 5. 

Wit k  which  every  salient  point  is  richly  fretted — 5. 

First  in  the  world  for  purely  decorative  workman 
ship  —  y. 

The  Taj  represents  the  stage  where  the  architect 
ends  and  the  jeweler  begins  —  5. 

The  Taj  is  entirely  of  marble  and  gems  —  7. 

Inlaid  with  precious  stones  in  lovely  patterns  of 
flowers  —  5. 

The  inlaid  ivork  of  flowers  done  in  gems  is  very 
brilliant — (followed  by  a  most  important  modifi 
cation  which  the  reader  is  sure  to  read  too  care 
lessly)  —  2. 

The  vast  mausoletim  — j. 

This  marvel  of  marble  —  5. 

The  exquisite  enclosure — 5, 
18,* 


274  Following  the  Equator 

Inlaid  with  flowers  made  of  costly  gems  — 5. 

A  thing  of  perfect  beauty  and  absolute  finish  — 5. 

Those  details  are  correct;  the  figures  which  I 
have  placed  after  them  represent  quite  fairly  their 
individual  values.  Then  why,  as  a  whole,  do  they 
convey  a  false  impression  to  the  reader?  It  is  be 
cause  the  reader  —  beguiled  by  his  heated  imagina 
tion  —  masses  them  in  the  wrong  way.  The  writer 
would  mass  the  first  three  figures  in  the  following 
way,  and  they  would  speak  the  truth : 

5 
5 
9 

Total  — 19 

But  the  reader  masses  them  thus  —  and  then  they 
tell  a  lie —  559. 

The  writer  would  add  all  of  his  twelve  numerals 
together,  and  then  the  sum  would  express  the  whole 
truth  about  the  Taj,  and  the  truth  only  —  63. 

But  the  reader  —  always  helped  by  his  imagina 
tion —  would  put  the  figures  in  a  row  one  after  the 
other,  and  get  this  sum,  which  would  tell  him  a 
noble  big  lie : 

559575255555. 

You  must  put  in  the  commas  yourself;  I  have  to 
go  on  with  my  work. 

The  reader  will  always  be  sure  to  put  the  figures 
together  in  that  wrong  way,  and  then  as  surely  be 
fore  him  will  stand,  sparkling  in  the  sun,  a  gem- 
crusted  Taj  tall  as  the  Matterhorn. 


OS 

Following  the  Equator 

I  had  to  visit  Niagara  fifteen  times  before  I  suc 
ceeded  in  getting  my  imaginary  Falls  gauged  to  the 
actuality  and  could  begin  to  sanely  and  wholesomely 
wonder  at  them  for  what  they  were,  not  what  I  had 
expected  them  to  be.  When  I  first  approached 
them  it  was  with  my  face  lifted  toward  the  sky,  for 
I  thought  I  was  going  to  see  an  Atlantic  ocean  pour 
ing  down  thence,  over  cloud-vexed  Himalayan 
heights,  a  sea-green  wall  of  water  sixty  miles  front  and 
six  miles  high,  and  so,  when  the  toy  reality  came 
suddenly  into  view  —  that  beruffled  little  wet  apron 
hanging  out  to  dry  —  the  shock  was  too  much  for 
me,  and  I  fell  with  a  dull  thud. 

Yet  slowly,  surely,  steadily,  in  the  course  of  my 
fifteen  visits,  the  proportions  adjusted  themselves  to 
the  facts,  and  I  came  at  last  to  realize  that  a  water 
fall  a  hundred  and  sixty-five  feet  high  and  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  wide  was  an  impressive  thing.  It  was  not 
a  dipperful  to  my  vanished  great  vision,  but  it  would 
answer. 

I  know  that  I  ought  to  do  with  the  Taj  as  I  was 
obliged  to  do  with  Niagara  —  see  it  fifteen  times, 
and  let  my  mind  gradually  get  rid  of  the  Taj  built  in 
it  by  its  describers,  by  help  of  my  imagination,  and 
substitute  for  it  the  Taj  of  fact.  It  would  be  noble 
and  fine,  then,  and  a  marvel;  not  the  marvel  which 
it  replaced,  but  still  a  marvel,  and  fine  enough.  I 
am  a  careless  reader,  I  suppose  —  an  impressionist 
reader;  an  impressionist  reader  of  what  is  not  an 
impressionist  picture;  a  reader  who  overlooks  the 
R*« 


276  Following  the  Equator 

informing  details  or  masses  their  sum  improperly, 
and  gets  only  a  large,  splashy,  general  effect  —  an 
effect  which  is  not  correct,  and  which  is  not  war 
ranted  by  the  particulars  placed  before  me  —  par 
ticulars  which  I  did  not  examine,  and  whose  mean 
ings  I  did  not  cautiously  and  carefully  estimate.  It 
is  an  effect  which  is  some  thirty-five  or  forty  times 
finer  than  the  reality,  and  is  therefore  a  great  deal 
better  and  more  valuable  than  the  reality;  and  so,  I 
ought  never  to  hunt  up  the  reality,  but  stay  miles 
away  frcm  it,  and  thus  preserve  undamaged  my  own 
private  mighty  Niagara  tumbling  out  of  the  vault  of 
heaven,  and  my  own  ineffable  Taj,  built  of  tinted 
mists  upon  jeweled  arches  of  rainbows  supported  by 
colonnades  of  moonlight.  It  is  a  mistake  for  a 
person  with  an  unregulated  imagination  to  go  and 
look  at  an  illustrious  world's  wonder. 

I  suppose  that  many,  many  years  ago  I  gathered 
the  idea  that  the  Taj's  place  in  the  achievements  of 
man  was  exactly  the  place  of  the  ice-storm  in  the 
achievements  of  Nature;  that  the  Taj  represented 
man's  supremest  possibility  in  the  creation  of  grace 
and  beauty  and  exquisiteness  and  splendor,  just  as 
the  ice-storm  represents  Nature's  supremest  possi 
bility  in  the  combination  of  those  same  qualities.  I 
do  not  know  how  long  ago  that  idea  was  bred  in  me, 
but  I  know  that  I  cannot  remember  back  to  a  time 
when  the  thought  of  either  of  these  symbols  of 
gracious  and  unapproachable  perfection  did  not  at 
once  suggest  the  other.  If  I  thought  of  the  ice- 


j  ,^,j     ^->     1  '-H^/WI^  •  T^        /      • 

-  |||g*    j'Ucf  <T1^   y^t  £fjvw^  u 

Following  the  Equator  277 

storm,  the  Taj  rose  before  me  divinely  beautiful;  if 
I  thought  of  the  Taj,  with  its  encrustings  and  inlay- 
ings  of  jewels,  the  vision  of  the  ice-storm  rose. 
And  so,  to  me,  all  these  years,  the  Taj  has  had  no 
rival  among  the  temples  and  palaces  of  men,  none 
that  even  remotely  approached  it — it  was  man's 
architectural  ice-storm. 

Here  in  London  the  other  night  I  was  talking  with 
some  Scotch  and  English  friends,  and  I  mentioned 
the  ice-storm,  using  it  as  a  figure  —  a  figure  which 
failed,  for  none  of  them  had  heard  of  the  ice-storm. 
One  gentleman,  who  was  very  familiar  with  American 
literature,  said  he  had  never  seen  it  mentioned  in  any 
book.  That  is  strange.  And  I,  myself,  was  not 
able  to  say  that  I  had  seen  it  mentioned  in  a  book ; 
and  yet  the  autumn  foliage,  with  all  other  American 
scenery,  has  received  full  and  competent  attention. 

The  oversight  is  strange,  for  in  America  the  ice- 
storm  is  an  event.  And  it  is  not  an  event  which 
one  is  careless  about.  When  it  comes,  the  news 
flies  from  room  to  room  in  the  house,  there  are 
bangings  on  the  doors,  and  shoutings,  "  The  j££^_ 
storm  !  the  ice-storm  ! ' '  and  even  the  laziest  sleepers 
throw  off  the  covers  and  join  the  rush  for  the  win 
dows.  The  ice-storm  occurs  in  mid-winter,  and 
usually  its  enchantments  are  wrought  in  the  silence 
and  the  darkness  of  the  night.  A  fine  drizzling  rain 
falls  hour  after  hour  upon  the  naked  twigs  and 
branches  of  the  trees,  and  as  it  falls  it  freezes.  In 
time  the  trunk  and  every  branch  and  twig  are  in- 


278  Following  the  Equator 

cased  in  hard  pure  ice ;  so  that  the  tree  looks  like  a 
skeleton  tree  made  all  of  glass  —  glass  that  is  crystal- 
clear.  All  along  the  under  side  of  every  branch 
and  twig  is  a  comb  of  little  icicles  —  the  frozen  drip. 
Sometimes  these  pendants  do  not  quite  amount  to 
icicles,  but  are  round  beads  —  frozen  tears. 
/  The  weather  clears,  toward  dawn,  and  leaves  a 
brisk,  pure  atmosphere  and  a  sky  without  a  shred  of 
cloud  in  it  —  and  everything  is  still,  there  is  not  a 
breath  of  wind.  The  dawn  breaks  and  spreads,  the 
news  of  the  storm  goes  about  the  house,  and  the 
little  and  the  big,  in  wraps  and  blankets,  flock  to  the 
window  and  press  together  there,  and  gaze  intently 
out  upon  the  great  white  ghost  in  the  grounds,  and 
nobody  says  a  word,  nobody  stirs.  All  are  waiting; 
they  know  what  is  coming,  and  they  are  waiting  — 
waiting  for  the  miracle.  The  minutes  drift  on  and 
on  and  on,  with  not  a  sound  but  the  ticking  of  the 
clock ;  at  last  the  sun  fires  a  sudden  sheaf  of  rays 
into  the  ghostly  tree  and  turns  it  into  a  white  splen 
dor  of  glittering  diamonds.  Everybody  catches  his 
breath,  and  feels  a  swelling  in  his  throat  and  a 
moisture  in  his  eyes  —  but  waits  again ;  for  he  knows 
what  is  coming ;  there  is  more  yet.  The  sun  climbs 
higher,  and  still  higher,  flooding  the  tree  from  its 
loftiest  spread  of  branches  to  its  lowest,  turning  it 
to  a  glory  of  white  fire ;  then  in  a  moment,  without 
warning,  comes  the  great  miracle,  the  supreme 
miracle,  the  miracle  without  its  fellow  in  the  earth;  a 
gust  of  wind  sets  every  branch  and  twig  to  swaying, 


v>  ^         .     C^' 

^•<^.^ 

"*";  v>-\  X^ 


^   r  v 


Following  the  Equator  279 

and  in  an  instant  turns  the  whole  white  tree  into  a 
spouting  and  spraying  explosion  of  flashing  gems  of 
every  conceivable  color;  and  there  it  stands  and 
sways  this  way  and  that,  flash !  flash !  flash !  a 
dancing  and  glancing  world  of  rubies,  emeralds, 
diamonds,  sapphires,  the  most  radiant  spectacle,  the 
most  blinding  spectacle,  the  divinest,  the  most  ex 
quisite,  the  most  intoxicating  vision  of  fire  and  color 
and  intolerable  and  unimaginable  splendor  that  ever 
any  eye  has  rested  upon  in  this  world,  or  will  ever 
rest  upon  outside  of  the  gates  of  heaven. 

By  all  my  senses,  all  my  faculties,  I  know  that 
the  ice-storm  is  Nature's  supremest  achievement  in 
the  domain  of  the  superb  and  the  beautiful ;  and  by 
my  reason,  at  least,  I  know  that  the  Taj  is  man's 
ice-storm. 

In  the  ice-storm  every  one  of  the  myriad  ice-beads 
pendent  from  twig  and  branch  is  an  individual  gem, 
and  changes  color  with  every  motion  caused  by  the 
wind;  each  tree  carries  a  million,  and  a  forest-front 
exhibits  the  splendors  of  the  single  tree  multiplied 
by  a  thousand. 

It  occurs  to  me  now  that  I  have  never  seen  the 
ice-storm  put  upon  canvas,  and  have  not  heard  that 
any  painter  has  tried  to  do  it.  I  wonder  why  that 
is.  Is  it  that  paint  cannot  counterfeit  the  intense 
blaze  of  a  sun-flooded  jewel?  There  should  be,  and 
must  be,  a  reason,  and  a  good  one,  why  the  most 
enchanting  sight  that  Nature  has  created  has  been 

neglected  by  the  brush. 

-y^*^  •  -  - 


280  Following  the  Equator 

Often,  the  surest  way  to  convey  misinformation  is 
to  tell  the  strict  truth.  The  describers  of  the  Taj 
have  used  the  word  gem  in  its  strictest  sense  —  its 
scientific  sense.  In  that  sense  it  is  a  mild  word,  and 
promises  but  little  to  the  eye  —  nothing  bright, 
nothing  brilliant,  nothing  sparkling,  nothing  splendid 
in  the  way  of  color.  It  accurately  describes  the 
sober  and  unobtrusive  gem-work  of  the  Taj ;  that  is, 
to  the  very  highly-educated  one  person  in  a  thou 
sand  ;  but  it  most  falsely  describes  it  to  the  999. 
But  the  999  are  the  people  who  ought  to  be  espe 
cially  taken  care  of,  and  to  them  it  does  not  mean 
quiet-colored  designs  wrought  in  carnelians,  or 
agates,  or  such  things;  they  know  the  word  in  its 
wide  and  ordinary  sense  only,  and  so  to  them  it 
means  diamonds  and  rubies  and  opals  and  their 
kindred,  and  the  moment  their  eyes  fall  upon  it  in 
print  they  see  a  vision  of  glorious  colors  clothed  in 
fire. 

These  describers  are  writing  for  the  '*  general," 
and  so,  in  order  to  make  sure  of  being  understood, 
they  ought  to  use  words  in  their  ordinary  sense,  or 
else  explain.  The  word  fountain  means  one  thing 
in  Syria,  where  there  is  but  a  handful  of  people ;  it 
means  quite  another  thing  in  North  America,  where 
there  are  75,000,000.  If  I  were  describing  some 
Syrian  scenery,  and  should  exclaim,  "Within  the 
narrow  space  of  a  quarter  of  a  mile  square  I  saw,  in 
the  glory  of  the  flooding  moonlight,  two  hundred 
noble  fountains  —  imagine  the  spectacle !"  the  North 


>* 

wi>r 

<^A'U 


Following  the  Equator  281 

American  would  have  a  vision  of  clustering  columns 
of  water  soaring  aloft,  bending  over  in  graceful 
arches,  bursting  in  beaded  spray  and  raining  white 
fire  in  the  moonlight  —  and  he  would  be  deceived. 
But  the  Syrian  would  not  be  deceived;  he  would 
merely  see  two  hundred  freshwater  springs  —  two 
hundred  drowsing  puddles,  as  level  and  unpreten 
tious  and  unexcited  as  so  many  door-mats,  and  even 
with  the  help  of  the  moonlight  he  would  not  lose  his 
grip  in  the  presence  of  the  exhibition.  My  word 
"fountain"  would  be  correct;  it  would  speak  the 
strict  truth ;  and  it  would  convey  the  strict  truth  to 
the  handful  of  Syrians,  and  the  strictest  misinforma 
tion  to  the  North  American  millions.  With  their 
gems  —  and  gems  —  and  more  gems  —  and  gems 
again  —  and  still  other  gems  —  the  describers  of  the 
Taj  are  within  their  legal  but  not  their  moral  rights ; 
they  are  dealing  in  the  strictest  scientific  truth ;  and 
in  doing  it  they  succeed  to  admiration  in  telling 
"what  ain't  so." 


UrAi 

^  .''7A^f  ' 
LA**         ^^ 

A  (/  \ 

——— -  \ 


• 


» 


CHAPTER   XXIV. 

SATAN  (impatiently)  to  NEW  COMER.  The  trouble  with  you  Chicago  peo 
ple  is.  that  you  think  you  are  the  best  people  down  here ;  whereas  you  are 
merely  the  most  numerous.—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WE  wandered  contentedly  around  here  and  there 
in  India;  to  Lahore,  among  other  places, 
where  the  Lieutenant-Governor  lent  me  an  elephant. 
This  hospitality  stands  out  in  my  experiences  in  a 
stately  isolation.  It  was  a  fine  elephant,  affable, 
gentlemanly,  educated,  and  I  was  not  afraid  of  it. 
I  even  rode  it  with  confidence  through  the  crowded 
lanes  of  the  native  city,  where  it  scared  all  the 
horses  out  of  their  senses,  and  where  children  were 
always  just  escaping  its  feet.  It  took  the  middle  of 
the  road  in  a  fine,  independent  way,  and  left  it  to 
the  world  to  get  out  of  the  way  or  take  the  conse 
quences.  I  am  used  to  being  afraid  of  collisions 
when  I  ride  or  drive,  but  when  one  is  on  top  of  an 
elephant  that  feeling  is  absent.  I  could  have  ridden 
in  comfort  through  a  regiment  of  runaway  teams.  I 
could  easily  learn  to  prefer  an  elephant  to  any  other 
vehicle,  partly  because  of  that  immunity  from  col 
lisions,  and  partly  because  of  the  fine  view  one 
has  from  up  there,  and  partly  because  of  the  dignity 

(282) 


Following  the  Equator  283 

one  feels  in  that  high  place,  and  partly  because  one 
can  look  in  at  the  windows  and  see  what  is  going  on 
privately  among  the  family.  The  Lahore  horses 
were  used  to  elephants,  but  they  were  rapturously 
afraid  of  them  just  the  same.  It  seemed  curious. 
Perhaps  the  better  they  know  the  elephant  the  more 
they  respect  him  in  that  peculiar  way.  In  our  own 
case  we  are  not  afraid  of  dynamite  till  we  get  ac 
quainted  with  it. 

We  drifted  as  far  as  Rawal  Pindi,  away  up  on  the 
Afghan  frontier —  I  think  it  was  the  Afghan  frontier, 
but  it  may  have  been  Herzegovina  —  it  was  around 
there  somewhere  —  and  down  again  to  Delhi,  to  see 
the  ancient  architectural  wonders  there  and  in  Old 
Delhi  and  not  describe  them,  and  also  to  see  the 
scene  of  the  illustrious  assault,  in  the  Mutiny  days, 
when  the  British  carried  Delhi  by  storm,  one  of  the 
marvels  of  history  for  impudent  daring  and  immortal 
valor. 

We  had  a  refreshing  rest,  there  in  Delhi,  in  a 
great  old  mansion  which  possessed  historical  interest. 
It  was  built  by  a  rich  Englishman  who  had  become 
orientalized  —  so  much  so  that  he  had  a  zenana. 
But  he  was  a  broad-minded  man,  and  remained  so. 
To  please  his  harem  he  built  a  mosque;  to  please 
himself  he  built  an  English  church.  That  kind  of  a 
man  will  arrive,  somewhere.  In  the  Mutiny  days 
the  mansion  was  the  British  general's  headquarters. 
It  stands  in  a  great  garden  —  oriental  fashion  —  and 
about  it  are  many  noble  trees.  The  trees  harbor 


284  Following  the  Equator 

monkeys ;  and  they  are  monkeys  of  a  watchful  and 
enterprising  sort,  and  not  much  troubled  with  fear. 
They  invade  the  house  whenever  they  get  a  chance, 
and  carry  off  everything  they  don't  want.  One 
morning  the  master  of  the  house  was  in  his  bath, 
and  the  window  was  open.  Near  it  stood  a  pot  of 
yellow  paint  and  a  brush.  Some  monkeys  appeared 
in  the  window;  to  scare  them  away,  the  gentleman 
threw  his  sponge  at  them.  They  did  not  scare  at 
all ;  they  jumped  into  the  room  and  threw  yellow 
paint  all  over  him  from  the  brush,  and  drove  him 
out;  then  they  painted  the  walls  and  the  floor  and 
the  tank  and  the  windows  and  the  furniture  yellow, 
and  were  in  the  dressing-room  painting  that  when 
help  arrived  and  routed  them. 

Two  of  these  creatures  came  into  my  room  in  the 
early  morning,  through  a  window  whose  shutters  I 
had  left  open,  and  when  I  woke  one  of  them  was 
before  the  glass  brushing  his  hair,  and  the  other  one 
had  my  note-book,  and  was  reading  a  page  of 
humorous  notes  and  crying.  I  did  not  mind  the  one 
with  the  hair-brush,  but  the  conduct  of  the  other 
one  hurt  me;  it  hurts  me  yet.  I  threw  something 
at  him,  and  that  was  wrong,  for  my  host  had  told 
me  that  the  monkeys  were  best  left  alone.  They 
threw  everything  at  me  that  they  could  lift,  and  then 
went  into  the  bathroom  to  get  some  more  things, 
and  I  shut  the  door  on  them. 

At  Jeypore,  in  Rajputana,  we  made  a  consider 
able  stay.  We  were  not  in  the  native  city,  but 


Following  the  Equator  285 

several  miles  from  it,  in  the  small  European  official 
suburb.  There  were  but  few  Europeans  —  only 
fourteen  —  but  they  were  all  kind  and  hospitable, 
and  it  amounted  to  being  at  home.  In  Jeypore  we 
found  again  what  we  had  found  all  about  India  — 
that  while  the  Indian  servant  is  in  his  way  a  very 
real  treasure,  he  will  sometimes  bear  watching,  and 
the  Englishman  watches  him.  If  he  sends  him  on 
an  errand,  he  wants  more  than  the  man's  word  for 
it  that  he  did  the  errand.  When  fruit  and  vegetables 
were  sent  to  us,  a  "chit"  came  with  them  —  a 
receipt  for  us  to  sign ;  otherwise  the  things  might 
not  arrive.  If  a  gentleman  sent  up  his  carriage,  the 
chit  stated  "from"  such-and-such  an  hour  "to" 
such-and-such  an  hour  —  which  made  it  unhandy 
for  the  coachman  and  his  two  or  three  subordinates 
to  put  us  off  with  a  part  of  the  allotted  time  and 
devote  the  rest  of  it  to  a  lark  of  their  own. 

We  were  pleasantly  situated  in  a  small  two-storied 
inn,  in  an  empty  large  compound  which  was  sur 
rounded  by  a  mud  wall  as  high  as  a  man's  head. 
The  inn  was  kept  by  nine  Hindoo  brothers,  its 
owners.  They  lived,  with  their  families,  in  a  one- 
storied  building  within  the  compound,  but  off  to  one 
side,  and  there  was  always  a  long  pile  of  their  little 
comely  brown  children  loosely  stacked  in  its 
veranda,  and  a  detachment  of  the  parents  wedged 
among  them,  smoking  the  hookah  or  the  howdah, 
or  whatever  they  call  it.  By  the  veranda  stood  a 
palm,  and  a  monkey  lived  in  it,  and  led  a  lonesome 


286  Following  the  Equator 

life,  and  always  looked  sad  and  weary,  and  the  crows 
bothered  him  a  good  deal. 

The  inn  cow  poked  about  the  compound  and 
emphasized  the  secluded  and  country  air  of  the 
place,  and  there  was  a  dog  of  no  particular  breed, 
who  was  always  present  in  the  compound,  and 
always  asleep,  always  stretched  out  baking  in  the 
sun  and  adding  to  the  deep  tranquillity  and  repose- 
fulness  of  the  place,  when  the  crows  were  away  on 
business.  White-draperied  servants  were  coming 
and  going  all  the  time,  but  they  seemed  only  spirits, 
for  their  feet  were  bare  and  made  no  sound.  Down 
the  lane  a  piece  lived  an  elephant  in  the  shade  of  a 
noble  tree,  and  rocked  and  rocked,  and  reached 
about  with  his  trunk,  begging  of  his  brown  mistress 
or  fumbling  the  children  playing  at  his  feet.  And 
there  were  camels  about,  but  they  go  on  velvet  feet, 
and  were  proper  to  the  silence  and  serenity  of  the 
surroundings. 

The  Satan  mentioned  at  the  head  of  this  chapter 
was  not  our  Satan,  but  the  other  one.  Our  Satan 
was  lost  to  us.  In  these  later  days  he  had  passed 
out  of  our  life  —  lamented  by  me,  and  sincerely.  I 
was  missing  him ;  I  am  missing  him  yet,  after  all 
these  months.  He  was  an  astonishing  creature  to 
fly  around  and  do  things.  He  didn't  always  do 
them  quite  right,  but  he  did  them,  and  did  them 
suddenly.  There  was  no  time  wasted.  You  would 
say: 

*'  Pack  the  trunks  and  bags,  Satan." 


Following  the  Equator  287 

"  Wair  good  "  (very  good). 

Then  there  would  be  a  brief  sound  of  thrashing 
and  slashing  and  humming  and  buzzing,  and  a  spec 
tacle  as  of  a  whirlwind  spinning  gowns  and  jackets 
and  coats  and  boots  and  things  through  the  air,  and 
then  —  with  bow  and  touch : 

"Awready,  master." 

It  was  wonderful.  It  made  one  dizzy.  He 
crumpled  dresses  a  good  deal,  and  he  had  no  par 
ticular  plan  about  the  work  —  at  first  —  except  to 
put  each  article  into  the  trunk  it  didn't  belong  in. 
But  he  soon  reformed,  in  this  matter.  Not  entirely; 
for,  to  the  last,  he  would  cram  into  the  satchel 
sacred  to  literature  any  odds  and  ends  of  rubbish 
that  he  couldn't  find  a  handy  place  for  elsewhere. 
When  threatened  with  death  for  this,  it  did  not 
trouble  him ;  he  only  looked  pleasant,  saluted  with 
soldierly  grace,  said  "  Wair  good, "and  did  it  again 
next  day. 

He  was  always  busy;  kept  the  rooms  tidied  up, 
the  boots  polished,  the  clothes  brushed,  the  wash 
basin  full  of  clean  water,  my  dress  clothes  laid  out 
and  ready  for  the  lecture-hall  an  hour  ahead  of  time ; 
and  he  dressed  me  from  head  to  heel  in  spite  of  my 
determination  to  do  it  myself,  according  to  my  life 
long  custom. 

He  was  a  born  boss,  and  loved  to  command,  and 
to  jaw  and  dispute  with  inferiors  and  harry  them 
and  bullyrag  them.  He  was  fine  at  the  railway 
station  —  yes,  he  was  at  his  finest  there.  He  would 


288  Following  the  Equator 

shoulder  and  plunge  and  paw  his  violent  way  through 
the  packed  multitude  of  natives  with  nineteen  coolies 
at  his  tail,  each  bearing  a  trifle  of  luggage  —  one  a 
trunk,  another  a  parasol,  another  a  shawl,  another  a 
fan,  and  so  on;  one  article  to  each,  and  the  longer 
the  procession,  the  better  he  was  suited  —  and  he 
was  sure  to  make  for  some  engaged  sleeper  and 
begin  to  hurl  the  owner's  things  out  of  it,  swearing 
that  it  was  ours  and  that  there  had  been  a  mistake. 
Arrived  at  our  own  sleeper,  he  would  undo  the 
bedding-bundles  and  make  the  beds  and  put  every 
thing  to  rights  and  shipshape  in  two  minutes ;  then 
put  his  head  out  at  a  window  and  have  a  restful  good 
time  abusing  his  gang  of  coolies  and  disputing  their 
bill  until  we  arrived  and  made  him  pay  them  and 
stop  his  noise. 

Speaking  of  noise,  he  certainly  was  the  noisiest 
little  devil  in  India  —  and  that  is  saying  much,  very 
much,  indeed.  I  loved  him  for  his  noise,  but  the 
family  detested  him  for  it.  They  could  not  abide 
it;  they  could  not  get  reconciled  to  it.  It  humili 
ated  them.  As  a  rule,  when  we  got  within  six  hun 
dred  yards  of  one  of  those  big  railway  stations,  a 
mighty  racket  of  screaming  and  shrieking  and  shout 
ing  and  storming  would  break  upon  us,  and  I  would 
be  happy  to  myself,  and  the  family  would  say,  with 
shame : 

4 'There  —  that's  Satan.    Why  do  you  keep  him?" 

And,  sure  enough,  there  in  the  whirling  midst  of 

fifteen    hundred   wondering  people    we    would    find 


Following  the  Equator  289 

that  little  scrap  of  a  creature  gesticulating  like  a 
spider  with  the  colic,  his  black  eyes  snapping,  his 
fez-tassel  dancing,  his  jaws  pouring  out  floods  of 
billingsgate  upon  his  gang  of  beseeching  and  aston 
ished  coolies. 

I  loved  him;  I  couldn't  help  it;  but  the  family  — 
why,  they  could  hardly  speak  of  him  with  patience. 
To  this  day  I  regret  his  loss,  and  wish  I  had  him 
back;  but  they — it  is  different  with  them.  He  was 
a  native,  and  came  from  Surat.  Twenty  degrees  of 
latitude  lay  between  his  birthplace  and  Manuel's, 
and  fifteen  hundred  between  their  ways  and  char 
acters  and  dispositions.  I  only  liked  Manuel,  but  I 
loved  Satan.  This  latter's  real  name  was  intensely 
Indian.  I  could  not  quite  get  the  hang  of  it,  but  it 
sounded  like  Bunder  Rao  Ram  Chunder  Clam 
Chowder.  It  was  too  long  for  handy  use,  anyway; 
so  I  reduced  it. 

When  he  had  been  with  us  two  or  three  weeks,  he 
began  to  make  mistakes  which  I  had  difficulty  in 
patching  up  for  him.  Approaching  Benares  one 
day,  he  got  out  of  the  train  to  see  if  he  could  get 
up  a  misunderstanding  with  somebody,  for  it  had 
been  a  weary,  long  journey  and  he  wanted  to  freshen 
up.  He  found  what  he  was  after,  but  kept  up  his 
pow-wow  a  shade  too  long  and  got  left.  So  there 
we  were  in  a  strange  city  and  no  chambermaid.  It 
was  awkward  for  us,  and  we  told  him  he  must  not 
do  so  any  more.  He  saluted  and  said  in  his  dear, 
pleasant  way,  "  Wair  good."  Then  at  Lucknow  he 
19** 


290  Following  the  Equator 

got  drunk.  I  said  it  was  a  fever,  and  got  the  family's 
compassion  and  solicitude  aroused ;  so  they  gave 
him  a  teaspoonful  of  liquid  quinine  and  it  set  his 
vitals  on  fire.  He  made  several  grimaces  which 
gave  me  a  better  idea  of  the  Lisbon  earthquake  than 
any  I  have  ever  got  of  it  from  paintings  and  descrip 
tions.  His  drunk  was  still  portentously  solid  next 
morning,  but  I  could  have  pulled  him  through  with 
the  family  if  he  would  only  have  taken  another 
spoonful  of  that  remedy;  but  no,  although  he  was 
stupefied,  his  memory  still  had  flickerings  of  life; 
so  he  smiled  a  divinely  dull  smile  and  said,  fum- 
blingly  saluting: 

41  Scoose  me,  mem  Saheb,  scoose  me,  Missy 
Saheb;  Satan  not  prefer  it,  please." 

Then  some  instinct  revealed  to  them  that  he  was 
drunk.  They  gave  him  prompt  notice  that  next 
time  this  happened  he  must  go.  He  got  out  a 
maudlin  and  most  gentle  "  Wair  good,"  and  saluted 
indefinitely. 

Only  one  short  week  later  he  fell  again.  And  oh, 
sorrow!  not  in  a  hotel  this  time,  but  in  an  English 
gentleman's  private  house.  And  in  Agra,  of  all 
places."  So  he  had  to  go.  When  I  told  him,  he 
said  patiently,  "Wair  good,"  and  made  his  parting 
salute,  and  went  out  from  us  to  return  no  more 
forever.  Dear  me!  I  would  rather  have  lost  a 
hundred  angels  than  that  one  poor  lovely  devil. 
What  style  he  used  to  put  on,  in  a  swell  hotel  or  in 
a  private  house  —  snow-white  muslin  from  his  chin 


Following  the  Equator  291 

to  his  bare  feet,  a  crimson  sash  embroidered  with 
gold  thread  around  his  waist,  and  on  his  head  a 
great  sea-green  turban  like  to  the  turban  of  the 
Grand  Turk. 

He  was  not  a  liar,  but  he  will  become  one  if  he 
keeps  on.  He  told  me  once  that  he  used  to  crack 
cocoanuts  with  his  teeth  when  he  was  a  boy ;  and 
when  I  asked  how  he  got  them  into  his  mouth,  he 
said  he  was  upward  of  six  feet  high  at  that  time, 
and  had  an  unusual  mouth.  And  when  I  followed 
him  up  and  asked  him  what  had  become  of  that 
other  foot,  he  said  a  house  fell  on  him  and  he  was 
never  able  to  get  his  stature  back  again.  Swervings 
like  these  from  the  strict  line  of  fact  often  beguile  a 
truthful  man  on  and  on  until  he  eventually  becomes 
a  liar. 

His  successor  was  a  Mohammedan,  Sahadat 
Mohammed  Khan;  very  dark,  very  tall,  very  grave. 
He  went  always  in  flowing  masses  of  white,  from 
the  top  of  his  big  turban  down  to  his  bare  feet. 
Plis  voice  was  low.  He  glided  about  in  a  noiseless 
way,  and  looked  like  a  ghost.  He  was  competent 
and  satisfactory.  But  where  he  was,  it  seemed 
always  Sunday.  It  was  not  so  in  Satan's  time. 

Jeypore  is  intensely  Indian,  but  it  has  two  or  three 
features  which  indicate  the  presence  of  European 
science  and  European  interest  in  the  weal  of  the 
common  public,  such  as  the  liberal  water-supply 
furnished  by  great  works  built  at  the  state's  ex 
pense;  good  sanitation,  resulting  in  a  degree  of 


292  Following  the  Equator 

healthf ulness  unusually  high  for  India ;  a  noble 
pleasure  garden,  with  privileged  days  for  women; 
schools  for  the  instruction  of  native  youth  in  ad 
vanced  art,  both  ornamental  and  utilitarian;  and  a 
new  and  beautiful  palace  stocked  with  a  museum  of 
extraordinary  interest  and  value.  Without  the 
Maharaja's  sympathy  and  purse  these  beneficences 
could  not  have  been  created ;  but  he  is  a  man  of 
wide  views  and  large  generosities,  and  all  such 
matters  find  hospitality  with  him. 

We  drove  often  to  the  city  from  the  hotel  Kaiser- 
i-Hind,  a  journey  which  was  always  full  of  interest, 
both  night  and  day,  for  that  country  road  was  never 
quiet,  never  empty,  but  was  always  India  in  motion, 
always  a  streaming  flood  of  brown  people  clothed  in 
smouchings  from  the  rainbow,  a  tossing  and  moiling 
flood,  happy,  noisy,  a  charming  and  satisfying  con 
fusion  of  strange  human  and  strange  animal  life  and 
equally  strange  and  outlandish  vehicles. 

And  the  city  itself  is  a  curiosity.  Any  Indian 
city  is  that,  but  this  one  is  not  like  any  other  that 
we  saw.  It  is  shut  up  in  a  lofty  turreted  wall ;  the 
main  body  of  it  is  divided  into  six  parts  by  perfectly 
straight  streets  that  are  more  than  a  hundred  feet 
wide ;  the  blocks  of  houses  exhibit  a  long  frontage 
of  the  most  taking  architectural  quaintnesses, 
the  straight  lines  being  broken  everywhere  by 
pretty  little  balconies,  pillared  and  highly  orna 
mented,  and  other  cunning  and  cozy  and  in 
viting  perches  and  projections,  and  many  of  the 


Following  the  Equator  293 

fronts  are  curiously  pictured  by  the  brush,  and  the 
whole  of  them  have  the  soft  rich  tint  of  strawberry 
ice-cream.  One  cannot  look  down  the  far  stretch 
of  the  chief  street  and  persuade  himself  that  these 
are  real  houses,  and  that  it  is  all  out  of  doors  —  the 
impression  that  it  is  an  unreality,  a  picture,  a  scene 
in  a  theater,  is  the  only  one  that  will  take  hold. 

Then  there  came  a  great  day  when  this  illusion 
was  more  pronounced  than  ever.  A  rich  Hindoo 
had  been  spending  a  fortune  upon  the  manufacture 
of  a  crowd  of  idols  and  accompanying  paraphernalia 
whose  purpose  was  to  illustrate  scenes  in  the  life  of 
his  especial  god  or  saint,  and  this  fine  show  was  to 
be  brought  through  the  town  in  processional  state 
at  ten  in  the  morning.  As  we  passed  through  the 
great  public  pleasure  garden  on  our  way  to  the  city 
sve  found  it  crowded  with  natives.  That  was  one 
sight.  Then  there  was  another.  In  the  midst  of 
the  spacious  lawns  stands  the  palace  which  contains 
the  museum  —  a  beautiful  construction  of  stone 
which  shows  arched  colonnades,  one  above  another, 
and  receding,  terrace-fashion,  toward  the  sky. 
Every  one  of  these  terraces,  all  the  way  to  the  top 
one,  was  packed  and  jammed  with  natives.  One 
must  try  to  imagine  those  solid  masses  of  splendid 
color,  one  above  another,  up  and  up,  against  the 
blue  sky,  and  the  Indian  sun  turning  them  all  to 
beds  of  fire  and  flame. 

Later,  when  we  reached  the  city,  and  glanced 
down  the  chief  avenue,  smouldering  in  its  crushed- 


294  Following  the  Equator 

strawberry  tint,  those  splendid  effects  were  repeated ; 
for  every  balcony,  and  every  fanciful  bird-cage  of  a 
snuggery  countersunk  in  the  house-fronts,  and  all 
the  long  lines  of  roofs,  were  crowded  with  people, 
and  each  crowd  was  an  explosion  of  brilliant  color. 

Then  the  wide  street  itself,  away  down  and  down 
and  down  into  the  distance,  was  alive  with  gor- 
geously-clothed  people  —  not  still,  but  moving,  sway 
ing,  drifting,  eddying,  a  delirious  display  of  all  colors 
and  all  shades  of  color,  delicate,  lovely,  pale,  soft, 
strong,  stunning,  vivid,  brilliant,  a  sort  of  storm  of 
sweet-pea  blossoms  passing  on  the  wings  of  a  hurri 
cane;  and  presently,  through  this  storm  of  color, 
came  swaying  and  swinging  the  majestic  elephants, 
clothed  in  their  Sunday  best  of  gaudinesses,  and  the 
long  procession  of  fanciful  trucks  freighted  with 
their  groups  of  curious  and  costly  images,  and  then 
the  long  rear-guard  of  stately  camels,  with  their 
picturesque  riders. 

For  color,  and  picturesqueness,  and  novelty,  and 
outlandishness,  and  sustained  interest  and  fascina 
tion,  it  was  the  most  satisfying  show  I  had  ever 
seen,  and  I  suppose  I  shall  not  have  the  privilege  of 
looking  upon  its  like  again. 


CHAPTER   XXV. 

In  the  first  place  God  made  idiots.    This  was  for  practice.  Then  He  made 
School   Boards.—  Pudd'nfiead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

CUPPOSE  we  applied  no  more  ingenuity  to  the 
^  instruction  of  deaf  and  dumb  and  blind  children 
than  we  sometimes  apply  in  our  American  public 
schools  to  the  instruction  of  children  who  are  in 
possession  of  all  their  faculties?  The  result  would 
be  that  the  deaf  and  dumb  and  blind  would  acquire 
nothing.  They  would  live  and  die  as  ignorant  as 
bricks  and  stones.  The  methods  used  in  the  asy 
lums  are  rational.  The  teacher  exactly  measures 
the  child's  capacity,  to  begin  with;  and  from  thence 
onwards  the  tasks  imposed  are  nicely  gauged  to  the 
gradual  development  of  that  capacity;  the  tasks 
keep  pace  with  the  steps  of  the  child's  progress, 
they  don't  jump  miles  and  leagues  ahead  of  it  by 
irrational  caprice  and  land  in  vacancy  —  according 
to  the  average  public-school  plan.  In  the  public 
school,  apparently,  they  teach  the  child  to  spell  cat, 
then  ask  it  to  calculate  an  eclipse ;  when  it  can  read 
words  of  two  syllables,  they  require  it  to  explain 
the  circulation  of  the  blood;  when  it  reaches  the 

(295) 


296  Following  the  Equator 

head  of  the  infant  class  they  bully  it  with  conun 
drums  that  cover  the  domain  of  universal  knowledge. 
This  sounds  extravagant  —  and  is;  yet  it  goes  no 
great  way  beyond  the  facts. 

I  received  a  curious  letter  one  day,  from  the 
Punjab  (you  must  pronounce  it  PunfawZ>).  The 
handwriting  was  excellent,  and  the  wording  was 
English  —  English,  and  yet  not  exactly  English. 
The  style  was  easy  and  smooth  and  flowing,  yet 
there  was  something  subtly  foreign  about  it  —  some 
thing  tropically  ornate  and  sentimental  and  rhetori 
cal.  It  turned  out  to  be  the  work  of  a  Hindoo 
youth,  the  holder  of  a  humble  clerical  billet  in  a 
railway  office.  He  had  been  educated  in  one  of  the 
numerous  colleges  of  India.  Upon  inquiry  I  was 
told  that  the  country  was  full  of  young  fellows  of 
his  like.  They  had  been  educated  away  up  to  the 
snow-summits  of  learning — and  the  market  for  all 
this  elaborate  cultivation  was  minutely  out  of  pro 
portion  to  the  vastness  of  the  product.  This  market 
consisted  of  some  thousands  of  small  clerical  posts 
under  the  Government — the  supply  of  material  for 
it  was  multitudinous.  If  this  youth  with  the  flowing 
style  and  the  blossoming  English  was  occupying  a 
small  railway  clerkship,  it  meant  that  there  were 
hundreds  and  hundreds  as  capable  as  he,  or  he 
would  be  in  a  high  place;  and  it  certainly  meant 
that  there  were  thousands  whose  education  and 
capacity  had  fallen  a  little  short,  and  that  they 
would  have  to  go  without  places.  Apparently,  then, 


Following  the  Equator  297 

the  colleges  of  India  were  doing  what  our  high 
schools  have  long  been  doing — richly  over-supply 
ing  the  market  for  highly-educated  service ;  and 
thereby  doing  a  damage  to  the  scholar,  and  through 
him  to  the  country. 

At  home  I  once  made  a  speech  deploring  the  in 
juries  inflicted  by  the  high  school  in  making  handi 
crafts  distasteful  to  boys  who  would  have  been 
willing  to  make  a  living  at  trades  and  agriculture  if 
they  had  but  had  the  good  luck  to  stop  with  the 
common  school.  But  I  made  no  converts.  Not 
one,  in  a  community  overrun  with  educated  idlers 
who  were  above  following  their  fathers'  mechanical 
trades,  yet  could  find  no  market  for  their  book- 
knowledge.  The  same  mail  that  brought  me  the 
letter  from  the  Punjab,  brought  also  a  little  book 
published  by  Messrs.  Thacker,  Spink  &  Co.,  of 
Calcutta,  which  interested  me,  for  both  its  preface 
and  its  contents  treated  of  this  matter  of  over- 
education.  In  the  preface  occurs  this  paragraph 
from  the  Calcutta  Review.  For  "  Government 
office"  read  "dry-goods  clerkship"  and  it  will  fit 
more  than  one  region  of  America : 

"The  education  that  we  give  makes  the  boys  a  little  less  clownish 
in  their  manners,  and  more  intelligent  when  spoken  to  by  strangers. 
On  the  other  hand,  it  has  made  them  less  contented  with  their  lot  in 
life,  and  less  willing  to  work  with  their  hands.  The  form  which  dis 
content  takes  in  this  country  is  not  of  a  healthy  kind;  for  the  Natives  of 
India  consider  that  the  only  occupation  worthy  of  an  educated  man  is 
that  of  a  writership  in  some  office,  and  especially  in  a  Government 
office.  The  village  schoolboy  goes  back  to  the  plow  with  the  greatest 
reluctance;  and  the  town  schoolboy  carries  the  same  discontent  and  in* 


298  Following  the  Equator 

efficiency  into  his  father's  workshop.  Sometimes  these  ex-students  posi 
tively  refuse  at  first  to  work;  and  more  than  once  parents  have  openly 
expressed  their  regret  that  they  ever  allowed  their  sons  to  be  inveigled 
to  school." 

The  little  book  which  I  am  quoting  from  is  called 
"  Indo-Anglian  Literature,"  and  is  well  stocked 
with  "baboo"  English  —  clerkly  English,  booky 
English,  acquired  in  the  schools.  Some  of  it  is 
yery  funny, —  almost  as  funny,  perhaps,  as  what 
you  and  I  produce  when  we  try  to  write  in  a  lan 
guage  not  our  own ;  but  much  of  it  is  surprisingly 
correct  and  free.  If  I  were  going  to  quote  good 
English  —  but  I  am  not.  India  is  well  stocked  with 
natives  who  speak  it  and  write  it  as  well  as  the  best 
of  us.  I  merely  wish  to  show  some  of  the  quaint 
imperfect  attempts  at  the  use  of  our  tongue.  There 
are  many  letters  in  the  book;  poverty  imploring 
help  —  bread,  money,  kindness,  office  —  generally 
an  office,  a  clerkship,  some  way  to  get  food  and  a 
ragout  of  the  applicant's  unmarketable  education; 
and  food  not  for  himself  alone,  but  sometimes  for  a 
dozen  helpless  relations  in  addition  to  his  own 
family;  for  those  people  are  astonishingly  unselfish, 
and  admirably  faithful  to  their  ties  of  kinship. 
Among  us  I  think  there  is  nothing  approaching  it. 
Strange  as  some  of  these  wailing  and  supplicating 
letters  are,  humble  and  even  groveling  as  some  of 
them  are,  and  quaintly  funny  and  confused  as  a 
goodly  number  of  them  are,  there  is  still  a  pathos 
about  them,  as  a  rule,  that  checks  the  rising  laugh 
and  reproaches  it.  In  the  following  letter  "  father  " 


Following  the  Equator  \   299     ) 

is  not  to  be  read  literally.  In  Ceylon  a  little  native 
beggar-girl  embarrassed  me  by  calling  me  father, 
although  I  knew  she  was  mistaken.  I  was  so  new 
that  I  did  not  know  that  she  was  merely  following 
the  custom  of  the  dependent  and  the  supplicant. 

"SlR5 

"  I  pray  please  to  give  me  some  action  (work)  for  I  am  very  poor 
boy  I  have  no  one  to  help  me  even  so  father  for  it  so  it  seemed  in  thy 
good  sight,  you  give  the  Telegraph  Office,  and  another  work  what  is 
your  wish  I  am  very  poor  boy,  this  understand  what  is  your  wish  you 
my  father  I  am  your  son  this  understand  what  is  your  wish. 

"  Your  Sirvent,  P.  C.  B." 

Through  ages  of  debasing  oppression  suffered  by 
these  people  at  the  hands  of  their  native  rulers,  they 
come  legitimately  by  the  attitude  and  language  of 
fawning  and  flattery,  and  one  must  remember  this 
in  mitigation  when  passing  judgment  upon  the  native 
character.  It  is  common  in  these  letters  to  find  the 
petitioner  furtively  trying  to  get  at  the  white  man's 
soft  religious  side;  even  this  poor  boy  baits  his 
hook  with  a  macerated  Bible-text  in  the  hope  that 
it  may  catch  something  if  all  else  fail. 

Here  is  an  application  for  the  post  of  instructor 
in  English  to  some  children : 

"  My  Dear  Sir  or  Gentleman,  that  your  Petitioner  has  much  qualifi 
cation  in  the  Language  of  English  to  instruct  the  young  boys;  I  was 
given  to  understand  that  your  of  suitable  children  has  to  acquire  the 
knowledge  of  English  language." 

As  a  sample  of  the  flowery  Eastern  style,  I  will 
take  a  sentence  or  two  from  a  long  letter  written  by 
a  young  native  to  the  Lieutenant-Governor  of  Bengal 
—  an  application  for  employments 


300  Following  the  Equator 

"HONORED  AND   MUCH   RESPECTED   SlR: 

"  I  hope  your  honor  will  condescend  to  hear  the  tale  of  this  poor 
creature.  I  shall  overflow  with  gratitude  at  this  mark  of  your  royal 
condescension.  The  bird-like  happiness  has  flown  away  from  my  nest- 
like  heart  and  has  not  hitherto  returned  from  the  period  whence  the 
rose  of  my  father's  life  suffered  the  autumnal  breath  of  death,  in  plain 
English  he  passed  through  the  gates  of  Grave,  and  from  that  hour  the 
phantom  of  delight  has  never  danced  before  me." 

It  is  all  school-English,  book-English,  you  see ; 
and  good  enough,  too,  all  things  considered.  If  the 
native  boy  had  but  that  one  study  he  would  shine, 
he  would  dazzle,  no  doubt.  But  that  is  not  the 
case.  He  is  situated  as  are  our  public-school  chil 
dren  —  loaded  down  with  an  over-freightage  of  other 
studies ;  and  frequently  they  are  as  far  beyond  the 
actual  point  of  progress  reached  by  him  and  suited 
to  the  stage  of  development  attained,  as  could  be 
imagined  by  the  insanest  fancy.  Apparently  —  like 
our  public-school  boy—  he  must  work,  work,  work, 
in  school  and  out,  and  play  but  little.  Apparently 
—  like  our  public-school  boy  —  his  "education" 
consists  in  learning  things,  not  the  meaning  of 
them;  he  is  fed  upon  the  husks,  not  the  corn. 
From  several  essays  written  by  native  school-boys 
in  answer  to  the  question  of  how  they  spend  their 
day,  I  select  one  —  the  one  which  goes  most  into 
detail : 

"  66.  At  the  break  of  day  I  rises  from  my  own  bed  and  finish  my 
daily  duty,  then  I  employ  myself  till  8  o'clock,  after  which  I  employ 
myself  to  bathe,  then  take  fov  my  body  some  sweet  meat,  and  just  at 
9^1  came  to  school  to  attend  my  class  duty,  then,  at  2^  P.M.  I  return 
from  school  and  engage  myself  to  do  my  natural  duty,  then  I  engage  for 
a  quarter  to  take  my  tiffin,  then  I  study  till  5  P.M.,  after  which  I  began 


Following  the  Equator  301 

to  play  anything  which  comes  in  my  head.  After  8^  half  pass  to  eight 
we  are  began  to  sleep,  before  sleeping  I  told  a  constable  just  no*  he 
came  and  rose  us  from  half  pass  eleven  we  began  to  read  still  morn 
ing." 

It  is  not  perfectly  clear,  now  that  I  come  to  cipher 
upon  it.  He  gets  up  at  about  5  in  the  morning,  or 
along  there  somewhere,  and  goes  to  bed  about  fifteen 
or  sixteen  hours  afterward  —  that  much  of  it  seems 
straight ;  but  why  he  should  rise  again  three  hours 
later  and  resume  his  studies  till  morning  is  puzzling. 

I  think  it  is  because  he  is  studying  history.  His 
tory  requires  a  world  of  time  and  bitter  hard  work 
when  your  "education"  is  no  further  advanced 
than  the  cat's;  when  you  are  merely  stuffing  your 
self  with  a  mixed-up  mess  of  empty  names  and 
random  incidents  and  elusive  dates,  which  no  one 
teaches  you  how  to  interpret,  and  which,  uninter- 
preted,  pay  you  not  a  farthing's  value  for  your 
waste  of  time.  Yes,  I  think  he  had  to  get  up  at 
half-past  ii  P.  M.  in  order  to  be  sure  to  be  perfect 
with  his  history  lesson  by  noon.  With  results  as 
follows  —  from  a  Calcutta  school  examination : 

"Q.      Who  was  Cardinal  Wokey  ? 

"  Cardinal  Wolsey  was  an  Editor  of  a  paper  named  North  Briton. 
No.  45  of  his  publication  he  charged  the  King  of  uttering  a  lie  from 
the  throne.  He  was  arrested  and  cast  into  prison;  and  after  releasing 
went  to  France. 

"3.  As  Bishop  of  York  but  died  in  disentry  in  a  church  on  his  way 
to  be  blockheaded. 

"  8.     Cardinal  Wolsey  was  the  son  of  Edward  IV,  after  his  father's 

death  he  himself  ascended  the  throne  at  the  age  of  (10)  ten  only,  but 

when  he  surpassed  or  when  he  was  fallen  in  his  twenty  years  of  age  at 

that  time  he  wished  to  make  a  journey  in  his  countries  under  him,  but 

20** 


302  Following  the  Equator 

he  was  opposed  by  his  mother  to  do  journey,  and  according  to  his 
mother's  example  he  remained  in  the  home,  and  then  became  King. 
After  many  times  obstacles  and  many  confusion  he  become  King  and 
afterwards  his  brother." 

There  is  probably  not  a  word  of  truth  in  that. 

"  Q.      What  is  the  meaning  of  Ich  Dien  ? 

"  10.  An  honor  conferred  on  the  first  or  eldest  sons  of  English 
Sovereigns.  It  is  nothing  more  than  some  feathers. 

"II.  Ich  Dien  was  the  word  which  was  written  on  the  feathers  of 
the  blind  King  who  came  to  fight,  being  interlaced  with  the  bridles  of 
the  horse. 

"13.  Ich  Dien  is  a  title  given  to  Henry  VII  by  the  Pope  of  Rome, 
when  he  forwarded  the  Reformation  of  Cardinal  Wolsy  to  Rome,  and 
for  this  reason  he  was  called  Commander  of  the  faith." 

A  dozen  or  so  of  this  kind  of  insane  answers  are 
quoted  in  the  book  from  that  examination.  Each 
answer  is  sweeping  proof,  all  by  itself,  that  the 
person  uttering  it  was  pushed  ahead  of  where  he 
belonged  when  he  was  put  into  history ;  proof  that 
he  had  been  put  to  the  task  of  acquiring  history  be 
fore  he  had  had  a  single  lesson  in  the  art  of  acquir 
ing  it,  which  is  the  equivalent  of  dumping  a  pupil 
into  geometry  before  he  has  learned  the  progressive 
steps  which  lead  up  to  it  and  make  its  acquirement 
possible.  Those  Calcutta  novices  had  no  business 
with  history.  There  was  no  excuse  for  examining 
them  in  it,  no  excuse  for  exposing  them  and  their 
teachers.  They  were  totally  empty;  there  was 
nothing  to  "  examine." 

Hejen  Keller  has  been  dumb,  stone  deaf,  and 
stone  bhnct,  ever  since  she  was  a  little  baby  a  year 
and  a  half  old ;  and  now  at  sixteen  years  of  age  this 


Following  the  Equator  303 

miraculous  creature,  this  wonder  of  all  ages,  passes 
the  Harvard  University  examination  in  Latin,  Ger 
man,  French  history,  belles  lettres,  and  such  things, 
and  does  it  brilliantly,  too,  not  in  a  commonplace 
fashion.  She  doesn't  know  merely  things,  she  is 
splendidly  familiar  with  the  meanings  of  them. 
When  she  writes  an  essay  on  a  Shakespearean  char 
acter,  her  English  is  fine  and  strong,  her  grasp  of 
the  subject  is  the  grasp  of  one  who  knows,  and  her 
page  is  electric  with  light.  Has  Miss  Sullivan  taught 
her  by  the  methods  of  India  and  the  American 
public  school?  No,  oh,  no;  for  then  she  would  be 
deafer  and  dumber  and  blinder  than  she  was  before. 
It  is  a  pity  that  we  can't  educate  all  the  children  in 
the  asylums. 

To  continue  the  Calcutta  exposure; 

"  What  is  the  meaning  of  a  Sheriff?  " 

"25.  Sheriff  is  a  post  opened  in  the  time  of  John.  The  duty  of 
Sheriff  here  in  Calcutta,  to  look  out  and  catch  those  carriages  which  is 
rashly  driven  out  by  the  coachman;  but  it  is  a  high  post  in  England. 

"  26.     Sheriff  was  the  English  bill  of  common  prayer. 

"  27.  The  man  with  whom  the  accusative  persons  are  placed  is 
called  Sheriff. 

"  28.  Sheriff  —  Latin  term  for  *  shrub,'  we  called  broom,  worn  by 
the  first  earl  of  Enjue,  as  an  emblem  of  humility  when  they  went  to 
the  pilgrimage,  and  from  this  their  hairs  took  their  crest  and  sur  name. 

"  29.  Sheriff  is  a  kind  of  titlous  sect  of  people,  as  Barons,  Nobles, 
etc. 

"  30.  Sheriff,  a  tittle  given  on  those  persons  who  were  respective 
and  pious  in  England." 

The  students  were  examined  in  the  following 
bulky  matters:  Geometry,  the  Solar  Spectrum,  the 
Habeas  Corpus  Act,  the  British  Parliament,  and  in 


304  Following  the  Equator 

Metaphysics  they  were  asked  to  trace  the  progress 
of  skepticism  from  Descartes  to  Hume.  It  is  within 
bounds  to  say  that  some  of  the  results  were  astonish 
ing.  Without  doubt,  there  were  students  present 
who  justified  their  teacher's  wisdom  in  introducing 
them  to  these  studies ;  but  the  fact  is  also  evident 
that  others  had  been  pushed  into  these  studies  to 
waste  their  time  over  them  when  they  could  have 
been  profitably  employed  in  hunting  smaller  game. 
Under  the  head  of  Geometry,  one  of  the  answers  is 
this: 

"  49.     The  whole  BD  =  the  whole  CA,  and  so-so-so-so-so-so  —  so." 

To  me  this  is  cloudy,  but  I  was  never  well  up  in 
geometry.  That  was  the  only  effort  made  among 
the  five  students  who  appeared  for  examination  in 
geometry;  the  other  four  wailed  and  surrendered 
without  a  fight.  They  are  piteous  wails,  too,  wails 
of  despair;  and  one  of  them  is  an  eloquent  re 
proach  ;  it  comes  from  a  poor  fellow  who  has  been 
laden  beyond  his  strength  by  a  stupid  teacher,  and 
is  eloquent  in  spite  of  the  poverty  of  its  English. 
The  poor  chap  finds  himself  required  to  explain 
riddles  which  even  Sir  Isaac  Newton  was  not  able 
to  understand : 

"  50.  Oh  my  dear  father  examiner  you  my  father  and  you  kindly 
give  a  number  of  pass  you  my  great  father. 

"51.  I  am  a  poor  boy  and  have  no  means  to  support  my  mother 
and  two  brothers  who  are  suffering  much  for  want  of  food.  I  get  four 
rupees  monthly  from  charity  fund  of  this  place,  from  which  I  send  two 
rupees  for  their  support,  and  keep  two  for  my  own  support.  Father,  if 
I  relate  the  unlucky  circumstance  under  which  we  are  placed,  then,  I 
think,  you  will  not  be  able  to  suppress  the  tender  tear.  (  > 


Following  the  Equator  305 

"  52.  Sir  which  Sir  Isaac  Newton  and  other  experienced  mathe 
maticians  cannot  understand  I  being  third  of  Entrance  Class  can  under 
stand  these  which  is  too  impossible  to  imagine.  And  my  examiner  also 
has  put  very  tiresome  and  very  heavy  propositions  to  prove." 

We  must  remember  that  these  pupils  had  to  do 
their  thinking  in  one  language,  and  express  them 
selves  in  another  and  alien  one.  It  was  a  heavy 
handicap.  I  have  by  me  "  English  as  She  is 
Taught"— a  collection  of  American  examinations 
made  in  the  public  schools  of  Brooklyn  by  one  of 
the  teachers,  Miss  Caroline  B.  Le  Row.  An  extract 
or  two  from  its  pages  will  show  that  when  the 
American  pupil  is  using  but  one  language,  and  that 
one  his  own,  his  performance  is  no  whit  better  than 
his  Indian  brother's: 

"ON  HISTORY. 

"  Christopher  Columbus  was  called  the  father  of  his  Country.  Queen 
Isabella  of  Spain  sold  her  watch  and  chain  and  other  millinery  so  that 
Columbus  could  discover  America. 

"The  Indian  wars  were  very  desecrating  to  the  country. 

"The  Indians  pursued  their  warfare  by  hiding  in  the  bushes  and 
then  scalping  them. 

"  Captain  John  Smith  has  been  styled  the  father  of  his  country.  His 
life  was  saved  by  his  daughter  Pochahantas. 

"The  Puritans  found  an  insane  asylum  in  the  wilds  of  America. 

"  The  Stamp  Act  was  to  make  everybody  stamp  all  materials  so  they 
should  be  null  and  void. 

"  Washington  died  in  Spain  almost  broken-hearted.  His  remains 
were  taken  to  the  cathedral  in  Havana. 

"  Gorilla  warfare  was  where  men  rode  on  gorillas." 

In  Brooklyn,  as  in  India,  they  examine  a  pupil, 
and  when  they  find  out  he  doesn't  know  anything, 
they  put  him  into  literature,  or  geometry,  or  astron- 
20  *« 


306  Following  the  Equator 

omy,  or  government,  or  something  like  that,  so 
that  he  can  properly  display  the  assification  of  the 
whole  system: 

"ON  LITERATURE. 

"  '  Bracebridge  Hall '  was  written  by  Henry  Irving. 
"  Edgar  A.  Poe  was  a  very  curdling  writer. 
*'  Beowulf  wrote  the  Scriptures. 

"Ben  Johnson  survived  Shakespeare  in  some  respects. 
"  In  the  '  Canterbury  Tale  '  it  gives  account  of  King  Alfred  on  his 
way  to  the  shrine  of  Thomas  Bucket. 

"  Chaucer  was  the  father  of  English  pottery. 
"Chaucer  was  succeeded  by  H.  Wads.  Longfellow." 

We  will  finish  with  a  couple  of  samples  of  "  liter 
ature," —  one  from  America,  the  other  from  India. 
The  first  is  a  Brooklyn  public-school  boy's  attempt 
to  turn  a  few  verses  of  the  "  Lady  of  the  Lake  " 
into  prose.  You  will  have  to  concede  that  he  did  it: 

"  The  man  who  rode  on  the  horse  performed  the  whip  and  an  in 
strument  made  of  steel  alone  with  strong  ardor  not  diminishing,  for, 
being  tired  from  the  time  passed  with  hard  labor  overworked  with  anger 
and  ignorant  with  weariness,  while  every  breath  for  labor  he  drew  with 
cries  full  of  sorrow,  the  young  deer  made  imperfect  who  worked  hard 
filtered  in  sight." 

The  following  paragraph  is  from  a  little  book 
which  is  famous  in  India  —  the  biography  of  a 
distinguished  Hindoo  judge,  Onoocoo1  Chunder 
Mookerjee;  it  was  written  by  his  nephew,  and  is 
unintentionally  funny  —  in  fact,  exceedingly  so.  I 
offer  here  the  closing  scene.  If  you  would  like  to 
sample  the  rest  of  the  book,  it  can  be  had  by  apply 
ing  to  the  publishers,  Messrs.  Thacker,  Spink  & 
Co.,  Calcutta: 


Following  the  Equator  307 

"  And  having  said  these  words  he  hermetically  sealed  his  lips  not 
to  open  them  again.  All  the  well-known  doctors  of  Calcutta  ihat  could 
be  procured  for  a  man  of  his  position  and  wealth  were  brought,  — 
Doctors  Payne,  Fayrer,  and  Nilmadhub  Mookerjee  and  others;  they  did 
what  they  could  do,  with  their  puissance  and  knack  of  medical  knowl 
edge,  but  it  proved  after  all  as  if  to  milk  the  ram  !  His  wife  and  chil 
dren  had  not  the  mournful  consolation  to  hear  his  last  words ;  he 
remained  sotto  voce  for  a  few  hours,  and  then  was  taken  from  us  at  6.12 
P.M.  according  to  the  caprice  of  God  which  passeth  understanding." 


CHAPTER    XXVI. 

j.  here  are  no  people  who  are  quite  so  vulgar  as  the  over-refined  ones. 

— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

WE  sailed  from  Calcutta  toward  the  end  of  March ; 
stopped  a  day  at  Madras ;  two  or  three  days 
in  Ceylon ;  then  sailed  westward  on  a  long  flight  for 
Mauritius.  From  my  diary: 

April  7.  We  are  far  abroad  upon  the  smooth 
waters  of  the  Indian  Ocean,  now;  it  is  shady  and 
pleasant  and  peaceful  under  the  vast  spread  of  the 
awnings,  and  life  is  perfect  again  —  ideal. 

The  difference  between  a  river  and  a  sea  is,  that 
the  river  looks  fluid,  and  the  sea  solid  —  usually 
looks  as  if  you  could  step  out  and  walk  on  it. 

The  captain  has  this  peculiarity — he  cannot  tell 
the  truth  in  a  plausible  way.  In  this  he  is  the  very 
opposite  of  the  austere  Scot  who  sits  midway  of  the 
table ;  he  cannot  tell  a  lie  in  an  ^//plausible  way. 
When  the  captain  finishes  a  statement  the  passengers 
glance  at  each  other  privately,  as  who  should  say, 
"Do  you  believe  that?"  When  the  Scot  finishes 
one,  the  look  says,  *'  How  strange  and  interesting." 
The  whole  secret  is  in  the  manner  and  method  of 
the  two  men.  The  captain  is  a  little  shy  and  diffi- 

(308) 


Following  the  Equator  309 

dent,  and  he  states  the  simplest  fact  as  if  he  were  a 
little  afraid  of  it,  while  the  Scot  delivers  himself  of 
the  most  abandoned  lie  with  such  an  air  of  stern 
veracity  that  one  is  forced  to  believe  it  although  one 
knows  it  isn't  so.  For  instance,  the  Scot  told  about 
a  pet  flying-fish  he  once  owned,  that  lived  in  a  little 
fountain  in  his  conservatory,  and  supported  itself 
by  catching  birds  and  frogs  and  rats  in  the  neighbor 
ing  fields.  It  was  plain  that  no  one  at  the  table 
doubted  this  statement. 

By  and  by,  in  the  course  of  some  talk  about 
custom-house  annoyances,  the  captain  brought  out 
the  following  simple  everyday  incident,  but  through 
his  infirmity  of  style  managed  to  tell  it  in  such  a  way 
that  it  got  no  credence.  He  said : 

"  I  went  ashore  at  Naples  one  voyage  when  I  was  in  that  trade,  and 
stood  around  helping  my  passengers,  for  I  could  speak  a  little  Italian. 
Two  or  three  times,  at  intervals,  the  officer  asked  me  if  I  had  anything 
dutiable  about  me,  and  seemed  more  and  more  put  out  and  disappointed 
every  time  I  told  him  no.  Finally,  a  passenger  whom  I  had  helped 
through  asked  me  to  come  out  and  take  something.  I  thanked  him, 
but  excused  myself,  saying  I  had  taken  a  whisky  just  before  I  came 
ashore. 

*'  It  was  a  fatal  admission.  The  officer  at  once  made  me  pay  six 
pence  import  duty  on  the  whisky  —  just  from  ship  to  shore,  you  see; 
and  he  fined  me  ,£5  for  not  declaring  the  goods,  another  £$  for  falsely 
denying  that  I  had  anything  dutiable  about  me,  also  £$  for  concealing 
the  goods,  and  ^50  for  smuggling,  which  is  the  maximum  penalty  for 
unlawfully  bringing  in  goods  under  the  value  of  sevenpence  ha'penny. 
Altogether,  sixty -five  pounds  sixpence  for  a  little  thing  like  that." 

The  Scot  is  always  believed,  yet  he  never  tells 
anything  but  lies;  whereas  the  captain  is  never  be 
lieved,  although  he  never  tells  a  lie,  so  far  as  I  can 


310  Following  tht  Equator 

judge.  If  he  should  say  his  uncle  was  a  male  person, 
he  would  probably  say  it  in  such  a  way  that  nobody 
would  believe  it;  at  the  same  time  the  Scot  could 
claim  that  he  had  a  female  uncle  and  not  stir  a 
doubt  in  anybody's  mind.  My  own  luck  has  been 
curious  all  my  literary  life ;  I  never  could  tell  a  lie 
that  anybody  would  doubt,  nor  a  truth  that  anybody 
would  believe. 

Lots  of  pets  on  board  —  birds  and  things.  In 
these  far  countries  the  white  people  do  seem  to  run 
remarkably  to  pets.  Our  host  in  Cawnpore  had  a 
fine  collection  of  birds  —  the  finest  we  saw  in  a 
private  house  in  India.  And  in  Colombo,  Dr. 
Murray's  great  compound  and  commodious  bunga 
low  were  well  populated  with  domesticated  company 
from  the  woods :  frisky  little  squirrels ;  a  Ceylon 
mina  walking  sociably  about  the  house;  a  small 
green  parrot  that  whistled  a  single  urgent  note  of  call 
without  motion  of  its  beak,  also  chuckled ;  a  monkey 
in  a  cage  on  the  back  veranda,  and  some  more  out 
in  the  trees ;  also  a  number  of  beautiful  macaws  in 
the  trees ;  and  various  and  sundry  birds  and  animals 
of  breeds  not  known  to  me.  But  no  cat.  Yet  a  cat 
would  have  liked  that  place. 

April  p.  Tea-planting  is  the  great  business  in 
Ceylon,  now.  A  passenger  says  it  often  pays  40 
per  cent,  on  the  investment.  Says  there  is  a  boom. 

April  10.  The  sea  is  a  Mediterranean  blue ;  and 
I  believe  that  that  is  about  the  divinest  color  known 
to  nature. 


THE  MATE'S  SHADOW  FROZE  TO  THE  DECK 


Following  the  Equator  311 

It  is  strange  and  fine  —  Nature's  lavish  generosities 
to  her  creatures.  At  least  to  all  of  them  except 
man.  For  those  that  fly  she  has  provided  a  home 
that  is  nobly  spacious  —  a  home  which  is  forty  miles 
deep  and  envelops  the  whole  globe,  and  has  not  an 
obstruction  in  it.  For  those  that  swim  she  has 
provided  a  more  than  imperial  domain  —  a  domain 
which  is  miles  deep  and  covers  four-fifths  of  the 
globe.  But  as  for  man,  she  has  cut  him  off  with  the 
mere  odds  and  ends  of  the  creation.  She  has  given 
him  the  thin  skin,  the  meager  skin  which  is  stretched 
over  the  remaining  one-fifth  —  the  naked  bones  stick 
up  through  it  in  most  places.  On  the  one-half  of 
this  domain  he  can  raise  snow,  ice,  sand,  rocks,  and 
nothing  else.  So  the  valuable  part  of  his  inheritance 
really  consists  of  but  a  single  fifth  of  the  family 
estate ;  and  out  of  it  he  has  to  grub  hard  to  get 
enough  to  keep  him  alive  and  provide  kings  and 
soldiers  and  powder  to  extend  the  blessings  of  civili 
zation  with.  Yet  man,  in  his  simplicity  and  com 
placency  and  inability  to  cipher,  thinks  Nature  re 
gards  him  as  the  important  member  of  the  family  — 
in  fact,  her  favorite.  Surely,  it  must  occur  to  even 
his  dull  head,  sometimes,  that  she  has  a  curious  way 
of  showing  it. 

Afternoon.  The  captain  has  been  telling  how,  in 
one  of  his  Arctic  voyages,  it  was  so  cold  that  the 
mate's  shadow  froze  fast  to  the  deck  and  had  to  be 
ripped  loose  by  main  strength.  And  even  then  he  got 
only  about  two-thirds  of  it  back.  Nobody  said  any- 


312  Following  the  Equator 

thing,  and  the  captain  went  away.  I  think  he  is  be 
coming  disheartened.  .  .  .  Also,  to  be  fair, 
there  is  another  word  of  praise  due  to  this  ship's 
library:  it  contains  no  copy  of  the  Vicar  of  Wake- 
field,  that  strange  menagerie  of  complacent  hypo 
crites  and  idiots,  of  theatrical  cheap-John  heroes  and 
heroines,  who  are  always  showing  off,  of  bad  people 
who  are  not  interesting,  and  good  people  who  are 
fatiguing.  A  singular  book.  Not  a  sincere  line  in 
it,  and  not  a  character  that  invites  respect;  a  book 
which  is  one  long  waste-pipe  discharge  of  goody- 
goody  puerilities  and  dreary  moralities;  a  book 
which  is  full  of  pathos  which  revolts,  and  humor 
which  grieves  the  heart.  There  are  few  things  in 
literature  that  are  more  piteous,  more  pathetic,  than 
the  celebrated  "humorous"  incident  of  Moses  and 
the  spectacles. 

Jane  Austen's  books,  too,  are  absent  from  this 
library.  Just  that  one  omission  alone  would  make  a 
fairly  good  library  out  of  a  library  that  hadn't  a 
book  in  it. 

Customs  in  tropic  seas.  At  5  in  the  morning  they 
pipe  to  wash  down  the  decks,  and  at  once  the  ladies 
who  are  sleeping  there  turn  out  and  they  and  their 
beds  go  below.  Then  one  after  another  the  men 
come  up  from  the  bath  in  their  pyjamas,  and  walk 
the  decks  an  hour  or  two  with  bare  legs  and  bare 
feet.  Coffee  and  fruit  served.  The  ship  cat  and  her 
kitten  now  appear  and  get  about  their  toilets ;  next 
the  barber  comes  and  flays  us  on  the  breezy  deck. 


Following  the  Equator  313 

Breakfast  at  9.30,  and  the  day  begins.  I  dc  not 
know  how  a  day  could  be  more  reposeful :  no 
motion;  a  level  blue  sea;  nothing  in  sight  from 
horizon  to  horizon ;  the  speed  of  the  ship  furnishes 
a  cooling  breeze;  there  is  no  mail  to  read  and 
answer ;  no  newspapers  to  excite  you ;  no  telegrams 
to  fret  you  or  fright  you  —  the  world  is  far,  far 
away ;  it  has  ceased  to  exist  for  you  —  seemed  a 
fading  dream,  along  in  the  first  days;  has  dissolved 
to  an  unreality  now ;  it  is  gone  from  your  mind  with 
all  its  businesses  and  ambitions,  its  prosperities  and 
disasters,  its  exultations  and  despairs,  its  joys  and 
griefs  and  cares  and  worries.  They  are  no  concern 
of  yours  any  more ;  they  have  gone  out  of  your  life ; 
they  are  a  storm  which  has  passed  and  left  a  deep 
calm  behind.  The  people  group  themselves  about  the 
decks  in  their  snowy  white  linen,  and  read,  smoke, 
sew,  play  cards,  talk,  nap,  and  so  on.  In  other 
ships  the  passengers  are  always  ciphering  about  when 
they  are  going  to  arrive;  out  in  these  seas  it  is  rare, 
very  rare,  to  hear  that  subject  broached.  In  other 
ships  there  is  always  an  eager  rush  to  the  bulletin 
board  at  noon  to  find  out  what  the  "  run  "  has  been ; 
in  these  seas  the  bulletin  seems  to  attract  no  interest; 
I  have  seen  no  one  visit  it ;  in  thirteen  days  I  have 
visited  it  only  once.  Then  I  happened  to  notice  the 
figures  of  the  day's  run.  On  that  day  there  hap 
pened  to  be  talk,  at  dinner,  about  the  speed  of 
modern  ships.  I  was  the  only  passenger  present 
who  knew  this  ship's  gait.  Necessarily,  the  Atlantic 


314  Following  the  Equator 

custom  of  betting  on  the  ship's  run  is  not  a  custom 
here  —  nobody  ever  mentions  it. 

I  myself  am  wholly  indifferent  as  to  when  we  are 
going  to  ' '  get  in  "  ;  if  any  one  else  feels  interested 
in  the  matter  he  has  not  indicated  it  in  my  hearing. 
If  I  had  my  way  we  should  never  get  in  at  all.  This 
sort  of  sea  life  is  charged  with  an  indestructible 
charm.  There  is  no  weariness,  no  fatigue,  no  worry, 
no  responsibility,  no  work,  no  depression  of  spirits. 
There  is  nothing  like  this  serenity,  this  comfort,  this 
peace,  this  deep  contentment,  to  be  found  anywhere 
on  land.  If  I  had  my  way  I  would  sail  on  forever 
and  never  go  to  live  on  the  solid  ground  again. 

One  of  Kipling's  ballads  has  delivered  the  aspect 
and  sentiment  of  this  bewitching  sea  correctly: 

"  The  Injian  Ocean  sets  an'  smiles 

So  sof,  so  bright,  so  bloomin'  blue; 

There  aren't  a  wave  for  miles  an'  miles 

Excep'  the  jiggle  from  the  screw." 

April  14.  It  turns  out  that  the  astronomical  ap 
prentice  worked  off  a  section  of  the  Milky  Way  on 
me  for  the  Magellan  Clouds.  A  man  of  more  ex 
perience  in  the  business  showed  one  of  them  to  me 
last  night.  It  was  small  and  faint  and  delicate,  and 
looked  like  the  ghost  of  a  bunch  of  white  smoke  left 
floating  in  the  sky  by  an  exploded  bombshell. 

Wednesday,  April  15.  Mauritius.  Arrived  and 
anchored  off  Port  Louis  2  A.M.  Rugged  clusters  of 
crags  and  peaks,  green  to  their  summits;  from  their 
bases  to  the  sea  a  green  plain  with  just  tilt  enough  to 


Following  the  Equator  315 

it  to  make  the  water  drain  off.  I  believe  it  is  in  56° 
E.  and  22°  S. —  a  hot,  tropical  country.  The  green 
plain  has  an  inviting  look ;  has  scattering  dwellings 
nestling  among  the  greenery.  Scene  of  the  senti 
mental  adventure  of  Paul  and  Virginia. 

Island  under  French  control  —  which  means  a  com 
munity  which  depends  upon  quarantines,  not  sanita 
tion,  for  its  health. 

Thursday,  April  16.  Went  ashore  in  the  fore 
noon  at  Port  Louis,  a  little  town,  but  with  the  largest 
variety  of  nationalities  and  complexions  we  have  en 
countered  yet.  French,  English,  Chinese,  Arabs, 
Africans  with  wool,  blacks  with  straight  hair,  East 
Indians,  half-white,  quadroons  —  and  great  varieties 
in  costumes  and  colors. 

Took  the  train  for  Curepipe  at  1.30  —  two  hours' 
run,  gradually  uphill.  What  a  contrast,  this  frantic 
luxuriance  of  vegetation,  with  the  arid  plains  of 
India;  these  architecturally  picturesque  crags  and 
knobs  and  miniature  mountains,  with  the  monotony 
of  the  Indian  dead-levels. 

A  native  pointed  out  a  handsome  swarthy  man  of 
grave  and  dignified  bearing,  and  said  in  an  awed  tone, 
1  That  is  so-and-so ;  has  held  office  of  one  sort  or 
another  under  this  Government  for  37  years  —  he  is 
known  all  over  this  whole  island  —  and  in  the  other 
countries  of  the  world  perhaps  —  who  knows?  One 
thing  is  certain  ;  you  can  speak  his  name  anywhere  in 
this  whole  island,  and  you  will  find  not  one  grown 
person  that  has  not  heard  it.  It  is  a  wonderful  thing 


V 

316  Following  the  Equator 

to  be  so  celebrated ;  yet  look  at  him ;  it  makes  no 
change  in  him;  he  does  not  even  seem  to  know  it." 

Curepipe  (means  Pincushion  or  Pegtown,  proba 
bly).  Sixteen  miles  (two  hours)  by  rail  from  Port 
Louis.  At  each  end  of  every  roof  and  on  the  apex 
of  every  dormer  window  a  wooden  peg  two  feet  high 
stands  up ;  in  some  cases  its  top  is  blunt,  in  others 
the  peg  is  sharp  and  looks  like  a  toothpick.  The 
passion  for  this  humble  ornament  is  universal. 

Apparently,  there  has  been  only  one  prominent 
event  in  the  history  of  Mauritius,  and  that  one  didn't 
happen.  I  refer  to  the  romantic  sojourn  of  Paul  and 
Virginia  here.  It  was  that  story  that  made  Mau 
ritius  known  to  the  woild,  made  the  name  familiar  to 
everybody,  the  geographical  position  of  it  to  nobody. 

A  clergyman  was  asked  to  guess  what  was  in  a 
box  on  a  table.  It  was  a  vellum  fan  painted  with 
the  shipwreck,  and  was  "  one  of  Virginia 's  wedding 
gifts." 

April  18.  This  is  the  only  country  in  the  world 
where  the  stranger  is  riot  asked  "  How  do  you  like 
this  place?"  This  is  indeed  a  large  distinction. 
Here  the  citizen  does  the  talking  about  the  country 
himself;  the  stranger  is  not  asked  to  help.  You 
get  all  sorts  of  information.  From  one  citizen  you 
gather  the  idea  that  Mauritius  was  made  first,  and 
then  heaven ;  and  that  heaven  was  copied  after 
Mauritius.  Another  one  tells  you  that  this  is  an 
exaggeration;  that  the  two  chief  villages,  Port  Louis 
and  Curepipe,  fall  short  of  heavenly  perfection  ;  that 


Following  the  Equator  317 

nobody  lives  in  Port  Louis  except  upon  compulsion, 
and  that  Curepipe  is  the  wettest  and  rainiest  place  in 
the  world.  An  English  citizen  said: 

"  In  the  early  part  of  this  century  Mauritius  was  used  by  the  French 
as  A  basis  from  which  to  operate  against  England's  Indian  merchantmen; 
so  England  captured  the  island  and  also  the  neighbor,  Bourbon,  to  stop 
that  annoyance.  England  gave  Bourbon  back;  the  government  in 
London  did  not  want  any  more  possessions  'in  the  West  Indies.'  If 
the  government  had  had  a  better  quality  of  geography  in  stock  it  would 
not  have  wasted  Bourbon  in  that  foolish  way.  A  big  war  will  tempo 
rarily  shut  up  the  Suez  Canal  some  day,  and  the  English  ships  will  have 
to  go  to  India  around  the  Cape  of  Good  Hope  again;  then  England  will 
have  to  have  Bourbon,  and  will  take  it. 

"  Mauritius  was  a  Crown  colony  until  20  years  ago,  with  a  Governor 
appointed  by  the  Crown  and  assisted  by  a  Council  appointed  by  himself; 
but  Pope  Hennessey  came  out  as  Governor  then,  and  he  worked  hard  to 
get  a  part  of  the  Council  made  elective,  and  succeeded.  So  now  the 
whole  Council  is  French,  and  in  all  ordinary  matters  of  legislation  they 
vote  together  and  in  the  French  interest,  not  the  English.  The  English 
population  is  very  slender;  it  has  not  votes  enough  to  elect  a  legislator. 
Half  a  dozen  rich  French  families  elect  the  legislature.  Pope  Hennessey 
was  an  Irishman,  a  Catholic,  a  Home  Ruler,  M.  P.,  a  hater  of  England 
and  the  English,  a  very  troublesome  person  and  a  serious  incumbrance 
at  Westminster;  so  it  was  decided  to  send  him  out  to  govern  unhealthy 
countries,  in  hope  that  something  would  happen  to  him.  But  nothing 
did.  The  first  experiment  was  not  merely  a  failure,  it  was  more  than  a 
failure.  He  proved  to  be  more  of  a  disease  himself  than  any  he  was 
sent  to  encounter.  The  next  experiment  was  here.  The  dark  scheme 
failed  again.  It  was  an  off  season  and  there  was  nothing  but  measles 
here  at  the  time.  Pope  Hennessey's  health  was  not  affected.  He 
worked  with  the  French  and  for  the  French  and  against  the  English, 
and  he  made  the  English  very  tired  and  the  French  very  happy,  and 
lived  to  have  the  joy  of  seeing  the  flag  he  served  publicly  hissed.  His 
memory  is  held  in  worshipful  reverence  and  affection  by  the  French. 

"  It  is  a  land  of  extraordinary  quarantine.  They  quarantine  a  ship 
for  anything  or  for  nothing;  quarantine  her  for  20  or  even  30  days. 
They  once  quarantined  a  ship  because  her  captain  had  had  the  smallpox 
when  he  was  a  boy.  That  and  because  he  wa.s  English. 


r** 


318  Following  the  Equator 

"  The  population  is  very  small;  small  to  insignificance.  The  majority 
is  East  Indian;  then  mongrels;  then  negroes  (descendants  of  the  slaves 
of  the  French  times);  then  French;  then  English.  There  was  an 
American,  but  he  is  dead  or  mislaid.  The  mongrels  are  the  result  of  all 
kinds  of  mixtures:  black  and  white,  mulatto  and  white,  quadroon  and 
white,  octoroon  and  white.  And  so  there  is  every  shade  of  complexion; 
ebony,  old  mahogany,  horse  chestnut,  sorrel,  molasses  candy,  clouded 
amber,  clear  amber,  old  ivory  white,  new  ivory  white,  fish  belly  white  — 
this  latter  the  leprous  complexion  frequent  with  the  Anglo-Saxon  long 
resident  in  tropical  climates. 

"  You  wouldn't  expect  a  person  to  be  proud  of  being  a  Mauritian, 
now,  would  you?  But  it  is  so.  The  most  of  them  have  never  been  out 
of  the  island,  and  haven't  read  much  or  studied  much,  and  they  think 
the  world  consists  of  three  principal  countries  —  Judaea,  France,  and 
Mauritius;  so  they  are  very  proud  of  belonging  to  one  of  the  three  grand 
divisions  of  the  globe.  They  think  that  Russia  and  Germany  are  in 
England,  and  that  England  does  not  amount  to  much.  They  have  heard 
vaguely  about  the  United  States  and  the  equator,  but  think  both  of  them 
are  monarchies.  They  think  Mount  Peter  Botte  is  the  highest  mountain 
in  the  world,  and  if  you  show  one  of  them  a  picture  of  Milan  Cathedral 
he  will  swell  up  with  satisfaction  and  say  that  the  idea  of  that  jungle  of 
spires  was  stolen  from  the  forest  of  peg-tops  and  toothpicks  that  makes 
the  roofs  of  Curepipe  look  so  fine  and  prickly. 

"There  is  not  much  trade  in  books.  The  newspapers  educate  and 
entertain  the  people.  Mainly  the  latter.  They  have  two  pages  of  large- 
print  reading  matter  —  one  of  them  English,  the  other  French.  The 
English  page  is  a  translation  of  the  French  one.  The  typography  is 
super-extra  primitive;  in  this  quality  it  has  not  its  equal  anywhere. 
There  is  no  proof-reader  now;  he  is  dead. 

"  Where  do  they  get  matter  to  fill  up  a  page  in  this  little  island  lost 
'."*.  the  wastes  of  the  Indian  Ocean?  Oh,  Madagascar.  They  discuss 
Madagascar  and  France.  That  is  the  bulk.  Then  they  chock  up  the 
rest  with  advice  to  the  Government.  Also,  slurs  upon  the  English 
administration.  The  papers  are  all  owned  and  edited  by  Creoles  — 
French. 

"  The  language  of  the  country  is  French.  Everybody  speaks  it  — 
has  to.  You  have  to  know  French  —  particularly  mongrel  French,  the 
patois  spoken  by  Tom,  Dick,  and  Harry  of  the  multiform  complexions 
—  or  you  can't  get  along. 


Following  the  Equator  319 

'*  This  was  a  flourishing  country  in  former  days,  for  it  made  then 
and  still  makes  the  best  sugar  in  the  world;  but  first  the  Suez  Canal 
severed  it  from  the  world  and  left  it  out  in  the  cold,  and  next  the  beet 
root  sugar,  helped  by  bounties,  captured  the  European  markets.  Sugar 
is  the  life  of  Mauritius,  and  it  is  losing  its  grip.  Its  downward 
course  was  checked  by  the  depreciation  of  the  rupee — for  the  planter 
pays  wages  in  rupees  but  sells  his  crop  for  gold  —  and  the  insurrection 
in  Cuba  and  paralyzation  of  the  sugar  industry  there  have  given  our 
prices  here  a  life-saving  lift;  but  the  outlook  has  nothing  permanently 
favorable  about  it.  It  takes  a  year  to  mature  the  canes  — on  the  high 
ground  three  and  six  months  longer  —  and  there  is  always  a  chance  that 
the  annual  cyclone  will  rip  the  profit  out  of  the  crop.  In  recent  times  a 
cyclone  took  the  whole  crop,  as  you  may  say;  and  the  island  never  saw 
a  finer  one.  Some  of  the  noblest  sugar  estates  on  the  island  are  in  deep 
difficulties.  A  dozen  of  them  are  investments  of  English  capital;  and 
the  companies  that  own  them  are  at  work  now,  trying  to  settle  up  and 
get  out  with  a  saving  of  half  the  money  they  put  in.  You  know,  in 
these  days,  when  a  country  begins  to  introduce  the  tea  culture,  it  means 
that  its  own  specialty  has  gone  back  on  it.  Look  at  Bengal;  look  at 
Ceylon.  Well,  they've  begun  to  introduce  the  tea  culture  here. 

"  Many  copies  of  Paul  and  Virginia  are  sold  every  year  in  Mauritius. 
No  other  book  is  so  popular  here  except  the  Bible.  By  many  it  is  sup 
posed  to  be  a  part  of  the  Bible.  All  the  missionaries  work  up  their 
French  on  it  when  they  come  here  to  pervert  the  Catholic  mongrel.  It 
is  the  greatest  story  that  was  ever  written  about  Mauritius,  and  the 
only  one." 


CHAPTER   XXVII. 

The  principal  difference  between  a  cat  and  a  lie  is  that  the  cat  has  only  nine 
lives. —  Pudd'nkead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

APRIL  20.— The  cyclone  of  1892  killed  and  crip 
pled  hundreds  of  people ;  it  was  accompanied 
by  a  deluge  of  rain,  which  drowned  Port  Louis  and 
produced  a  water  famine.  Quite  true;  for  it  burst 
the  reservoir  and  the  water-pipes;  and  for  a  time 
after  the  flood  had  disappeared  there  was  much  dis 
tress  from  want  of  water. 

This  is  the  only  place  in  the  world  where  no  breed 
of  matches  can  stand  the  damp.  Only  one  match 
in  1 6  will  light. 

The  roads  are  hard  and  smooth;  some  of  the 
compounds  are  spacious,  some  of  the  bungalows 
commodious,  and  the  roadways  are  walled  by  tall 
bamboo  hedges,  trim  and  green  and  beautiful;  and 
there  are  azalea  hedges,  too,  both  the  white  and  the 
red ;  I  never  saw  that  before. 

As  to  healthiness:  I  translate  from  to-day's 
(April  20)  Merchants'  and  Planters'  Gazette,  from 
the  article  of  a  regular  contributor,  "  Carminge," 
concerning  the  death  of  the  nephew  of  a  prominent 

citizen: 

(320) 


Following  the  Equator  321 

"  Sad  and  lugubrious  existence,  this  which  we  lead  in  Mauritius;  I 
believe  there  is  no  other  country  in  the  world  where  one  dies  more  easily 
than  among  us.  The  least  indisposition  becomes  a  mortal  malady;  a 
simple  headache  develops  into  meningitis;  a  cold  into  pneumonia,  and 
presently,  when  we  are  least  expecting  it,  death  is  a  guest  in  our 
home." 

This  daily  paper  has  a  meteorological  report 
which  tells  you  what  the  weather  was  day  before 
yesterday. 

One  is  never  pestered  by  a  beggar  or  a  peddler  in 
this  town,  so  far  as  I  can  see.  This  is  pleasantly 
different  from  India. 

April  22.  To  such  as  believe  that  the  quaint 
product  called  French  civilization  would  be  an  im 
provement  upon  the  civilization  of  New  Guinea  and 
the  like,  the  snatching  of  Madagascar  and  the  laying 
on  of  French  civilization  there  will  be  fully  justified. 
But  why  did  the  English  allow  the  French  to  have 
Madagascar?  Did  she  respect  a  theft  of  a  couple  of 
centuries  ago?  Dear  me,  robbery  by  European 
nations  of  each  other's  territories  has  never  been  a 
sin,  is  not  a  sin  to-day.  To  the  several  cabinets  the 
several  political  establishments  of  the  world  are 
clothes-lines;  and  a  large  part  of  the  official  duty  of 
these  cabinets  is  to  keep  an  eye  on  each  other's 
wash  and  grab  what  they  can  of  it  as  opportunity 
offers.  All  the  territorial  possessions  of  all  the 
political  establishments  in  the  earth  —  including 
America,  of  course  —  consist  of  pilferings  from 
other  people's  wash.  No  tribe,  howsoever  insignifi 
cant,  and  no  nation,  howsoever  mighty,  occupies  a 
21  *« 


322  Following  the  Equator 

foot  of  land  that  was  not  stolen.  When  the  English, 
the  French,  and  the  Spaniards  reached  America, 
the  Indian  tribes  had  been  raiding  each  other's  terri 
torial  clothes-lines  for  ages,  and  every  acre  of 
ground  in  the  continent  had  been  stolen  and  re- 
stolen  500  times.  The  English,  the  French,  and 
the  Spaniards  went  to  work  and  stole  it  all  over 
again ;  and  when  that  was  satisfactorily  accomplished 
they  went  diligently  to  work  and  stole  it  from  each 
other.  In  Europe  and  Asia  and  Africa  every  acre 
of  ground  has  been  stolen  several  millions  of  times. 
A  crime  persevered  in  a  thousand  centuries  ceases 
to  be  a  crime,  and  becomes  a  virtue.  This  is  the 
law  of  custom,  and  custom  supersedes  all  other 
forms  of  law.  Christian  governments  are  as  frank 
to-day,  as  open  and  above-board,  in  discussing  pro 
jects  for  raiding  each  other's  clothes-lines  as  ever 
they  were  before  the  Golden  Rule  came  smiling  into 
this  inhospitable  world  and  couldn't  get  a  night's 
lodging  anywhere.  In  150  years  England  has  bene 
ficently  retired  garment  after  garment  from  the  In 
dian  lines,  until  there  is  hardly  a  rag  of  the  original 
wash  left  dangling  anywhere.  In  800  years  an  ob 
scure  tribe  of  Muscovite  savages  has  risen  to  the 
dazzling  position  of  Land-Robber-in-Chief ;  she 
found  a  quarter  of  the  world  hanging  out  to  dry 
on  a  hundred  parallels  of  latitude,  and  she  scooped 
in  the  whole  wash.  She  keeps  a  sharp  eye  on  a 
multitude  of  little  lines  that  stretch  along  the  north 
ern  boundaries  of  India,  and  every  now  and  then 


Following  the  Equator  323 

she  snatches  a  hip-rag  or  a  pair  of  pyjamas.  It  is 
England's  prospective  property,  and  Russia  knows 
it;  but  Russia  cares  nothing  for  that.  In  fact,  in 
our  day,  land-robbery,  claim-jumping,  is  become  a 
European  governmental  frenzy.  Some  have  been 
hard  at  it  in  the  borders  of  China,  in  Burmah,  in 
Siam,  and  the  islands  of  the  sea;  and  all  have  been 
at  it  in  Africa.  Africa  has  been  as  coolly  divided 
up  and  portioned  out  among  the  gang  as  if  they 
had  bought  it  and  paid  for  it.  And  now  straight 
way  they  are  beginning  the  old  game  again  —  to 
steal  each  other's  grabbings.  Germany  found  a 
vast  slice  of  Central  Africa  with  the  English  flag 
and  the  English  missionary  and  the  English  trader 
scattered  all  over  it,  but  with  certain  formalities 
neglected  —  no  signs  up,  "Keep  off  the  grass," 
4  Trespassers  forbidden,"  etc.— and  she  stepped  in 
with  a  cold  calm  smile  and  put  up  the  signs  herself, 
and  swept  those  English  pioneers  promptly  out  of 
the  country. 

There  is  a  tremendous  point  there.  It  can  be  put 
into  the  form  of  a  maxim  :  Get  your  formalities  right 
—  never  mind  about  the  moralities. 

It  was  an  impudent  thing;  but  England  had  to 
put  up  with  it.  Now,  in  the  case  of  Madagascar, 
the  formalities  had  originally  been  observed,  but  by 
neglect  they  had  fallen  into  desuetude  ages  ago. 
England  should  have  snatched  Madagascar  from  the 
French  clothes-line.  Without  an  effort  she  could 
have  saved  those  harmless  natives  from  the  calamity 


324  Following  the  Equator 

of  French  civilization,  and  she  did  not  do  it.  Now 
it  is  too  late. 

The  signs  of  the  times  show  plainly  enough  what 
is  going  to  happen.  All  the  savage  lands  in  the 
world  are  going  to  be  brought  under  subjection  to  the 
Christian  governments  of  Europe.  I  am  not  sorry, 
but  glad.  This  coming  fate  might  have  been  a 
calamity  to  those  savage  peoples  two  hundred  years 
ago;  but  now  it  will  in  some  cases  be  a  benefaction. 
The  sooner  the  seizure  is  consummated,  the  better 
for  the  savages.  The  dreary  and  dragging  ages  of 
bloodshed  and  disorder  and  oppression  will  give 
place  to  peace  and  order  and  the  reign  of  law. 
When  one  considers  what  India  was  under  her  Hin 
doo  and  Mohammedan  rulers,  and  what  she  is  now; 
when  he  remembers  the  miseries  of  her  millions 
then  and  the  protections  and  humanities  which  they 
enjoy  now,  he  must  concede  that  the  most  fortunate 
thing  that  has  ever  befallen  that  empire  was  the 
establishment  of  British  supremacy  there.  The 
savage  lands  of  the  world  are  to  pass  to  alien  pos 
session,  their  peoples  to  the  mercies  of  alien  rulers. 
Let  us  hope  and  believe  that  they  will  all  benefit  by 
the  change. 

April  23.  "The  first  year  they  gather  shells; 
the  second  year  they  gather  shells  and  drink ;  the 
third  year  they  do  not  gather  shells."  (Said  of  im 
migrants  to  Mauritius.) 

Population  375,000.  One  hundred  and  twenty 
sugar  factories. 


Following  the  Equator  325 

Population  1851,  185,000.  The  increase  is  due 
mainly  to  the  introduction  of  Indian  coolies.  They 
now  apparently  form  the  great  majority  of  the 
population.  They  are  admirable  breeders;  their 
homes  are  always  hazy  with  children.  Great  savers 
of  money.  A  British  officer  told  me  that  in  India 
he  paid  his  servant  10  rupees  a  month,  and  he  had 
II  cousins,  uncles,  parents,  etc.,  dependent  upon 
him,  and  he  supported  them  on  his  wages.  These 
thrifty  coolies  are  said  to  be  acquiring  land  a  trifle 
at  a  time,  and  cultivating  it;  and  may  own  the 
island  by  and  by. 

The  Indian  women  do  very  hard  labor  for  wages 
running  from  -j4^  of  a  rupee  for  twelve  hours'  work, 
to  ^5Q°Q.  They  carry  mats  of  sugar  on  their  heads 
(70  pounds)  all  day  lading  ships,  for  half  a  rupee, 
and  work  at  gardening  all  day  for  less. 

The  camaron  is  a  fresh  water  creature  like  a  cray 
fish.  It  is  regarded  here  as  the  world's  chief est 
delicacy — and  certainly  it  is  good.  Guards  patrol 
the  streams  to  prevent  poaching  it.  A  fine  of  Rs. 
200  or  300  (they  say)  for  poaching.  Bait  is  thrown 
in  the  water;  the  camaron  goes  for  it;  the  fisher 
drops  his  loop  in  and  works  it  around  and  about  the 
camaron  he  has  selected,  till  he  gets  it  over  its  tail; 
then  there's  a  jerk  or  something  to  certify  the 
camaron  that  it  is  his  turn  n^w;  he  suddenly  backs 
away,  which  moves  the  loop  still  further  up  his 
person  and  draws  it  taut,  and  his  days  are  ended. 

Another  dish,  called  palmiste,  is  like  raw  turnip- 


326  Following  the  Equator 

shavings  and  tastes  like  green  almonds ;  is  very  deli 
cate  and  good.  Costs  the  life  of  a  palm  tree  12  to 
2O  years  old  —  for  it  is  the  pith. 

Another  dish  —  looks  like  greens  or  a  tangle  of 
fine  seaweed  —  is  a  preparation  of  the  deadly  night 
shade.  Good  enough. 

The  monkeys  live  in  the  dense  forests  on  the 
flanks  of  the  toy  mountains,  and  they  flock  down 
nights  and  raid  the  sugar-fields.  Also  on  other 
estates  they  come  down  and  destroy  a  sort  of  bean- 
crop —  just  for  fun,  apparently  —  tear  off  the  pods 
and  throw  them  down. 

The  cyclone  of  1892  tore  down  two  great  blocks 
of  stone  buildings  in  the  center  of  Port  Louis  —  the 
chief  architectural  feature  —  and  left  the  uncomely 
and  apparently  frail  blocks  standing.  Everywhere 
in  its  track  it  annihilated  houses,  tore  off  roofs, 
destroyed  trees  and  crops.  The  men  were  in  the 
towns,  the  women  and  children  at  home  in  the 
country  getting  crippled,  killed,  frightened  to  in 
sanity;  and  the  rain  deluging  them,  the  wind  howl 
ing,  the  thunder  crashing,  the  lightning  glaring. 
This  for  an  hour  or  so.  Then  a  lull  and  sunshine; 
many  ventured  out  of  safe  shelter;  then  suddenly 
here  it  came  again  from  the  opposite  point  and  re 
newed  and  completed  the  devastation.  It  is  said  the 
Chinese  fed  the  sufferers  for  days  on  free  rice. 

Whole  streets  in  Port  Louis  were  laid  flat  — 
wrecked.  During  a  minute  and  a  half  the  wind 
blew  123  miles  an  hour;  no  official  record  made 


Following  the  Equator  327 

after  that,  when  it  may  have  reached  150.  It  cut 
down  an  obelisk.  It  carried  an  American  ship  into 
the  woods  after  breaking  the  chains  of  two  anchors. 
They  now  use  four  —  two  forward,  two  astern. 
Common  report  says  it  killed  1,200  in  Port  Louis 
alone,  in  half  an  hour.  Then  came  the  lull  of  the 
central  calm  —  people  did  not  know  the  barometer 
was  still  going  down  —  then  suddenly  all  perdition 
broke  loose  again  while  people  were  rushing  around 
seeking  friends  and  rescuing  the  wounded.  The 
noise  was  comparable  to  nothing;  there  is  nothing 
resembling  it  but  thunder  and  cannon,  and  these  are 
feeble  in  comparison. 

What  there  is  of  Mauritius  is  beautiful.  You  have 
undulating  wide  expanses  of  sugar-cane  —  a  fine, 
fresh  green  and  very  pleasant  to  the  eye ;  and  every 
where  else  you  have  a  ragged  luxuriance  of  tropic 
vegetation  of  vivid  greens  of  varying  shades,  a  wild 
tangle  of  underbrush,  with  graceful  tall  palms  lifting 
their  crippled  plumes  high  above  it;  and  you  have 
stretches  of  shady  dense  forest  with  limpid  streams 
frolicking  through  them,  continually  glimpsed  and  lost 
and  glimpsed  again  in  the  pleasantest  hide-and-seek 
fashion ;  and  you  have  some  tiny  mountains,  some 
quaint  and  picturesque  groups  of  toy  peaks,  and  a 
dainty  little  vest-pocket  Matterhorn ;  and  here  and 
there  and  now  and  then  a  strip  of  sea  with  a  white 
ruffle  of  surf  breaks  into  the  view. 

That  is  Mauritius;  and  pretty  enough.  The  de 
tails  are  few,  the  massed  result  is  charming,  but  not 


328  Following  the  Equator 

imposing;  not  riotous,  not  exciting;  it  is  a  Sun 
day  landscape.  Perspective,  and  the  enchantments 
wrought  by  distance,  are  wanting.  There  are  no 
distances;  there  is  no  perspective,  so  to  speak. 
Fifteen  miles  as  the  crow  flies  is  the  usual  limit  of 
vision/  Mauritius  is  a  garden  and  a  park  combined. 
It  affects  one's  emotions  as  parks  and  gardens  affect 
them.  The  surfaces  of  one's  spiritual  deeps  are 
pleasantly  played  upon,  the  deeps  themselves  are 
not  reached,  not  stirred.  Spaciousness,  remote  alti 
tudes,  the  sense  of  mystery  which  haunts  apparently 
inaccessible  mountain  domes  and  summits  reposing 
in  the  sky  —  these  are  the  things  which  exalt  the 
spirit  and  move  it  to  see  visions  and  dream  dreams. 
The  Sandwich  Islands  remain  my  ideal  of  the 
perfect  thing  in  the  matter  of  tropical  islands.  I 
would  add  another  story  to  Mauna  Loa's  16,000 
feet  if  I  could,  and  make  it  particularly  bold  and 
steep  and  craggy  and  forbidding  and  snowy;  and  I 
would  make  the  volcano  spout  its  lava-floods  out  of 
its  summit  instead  of  its  sides ;  but  aside  from  these 
non-essentials  I  have  no  corrections  to  suggest.  I 
hope  these  will  be  attended  to;  I  do  not  wish  to 
have  to  speak  of  it  again. 


CHAPTER   XXVIII. 


When  your  watch  gets  out  of  order  you  have  choice  of  two  things  to  do . 
throw  it  in  the  fire  or  take  it  to  the  watch-tinker.    The  former  is  the  quickest. 

—  PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 


Arundel  Castle  is  the  finest  boat  I  have  seen 
in  these  seas.  She  is  thoroughly  modern,  and 
that  statement  covers  a  great  deal  of  ground.  She 
has  the  usual  defect,  the  common  defect,  the  uni 
versal  defect,  the  defect  that  has  never  been  miss 
ing  from  any  ship  that  ever  sailed  —  she  has  im 
perfect  beds.  Many  ships  have  good  beds,  but  no 
ship  has  very  good  ones.  In  the  matter  of  beds  all 
ships  have  been  badly  edited,  ignorantly  edited, 
from  the  beginning.  The  selection  of  the  beds  is 
given  to  some  hearty,  strong-backed,  self-made  man, 
when  it  ought  to  be  given  to  a  frail  woman  accus 
tomed  from  girlhood  to  backaches  and  insomnia. 
Nothing  is  so  rare,  on  either  side  of  the  ocean,  as  a 
perfect  bed ;  nothing  is  so  difficult  to  make.  Some 
of  the  hotels  on  both  sides  provide  it,  but  no  ship 
ever  does  or  ever  did.  In  Noah's  Ark  the  beds 
were  simply  scandalous.  Noah  set  the  fashion,  and 
it  will  endure  in  one  degree  of  modification  or 
another  till  the  next  flood. 

(329) 


330  Following  the  Equator 

8  A.  M.  Passing  Isle  de  Bourbon.  Broken-up 
sky-line  of  volcanic  mountains  in  the  middle.  Surely 
it  would  not  cost  much  to  repair  them,  and  it  seems 
inexcusable  neglect  to  leave  them  as  they  are. 

It  seems  stupid  to  send  tired  men  to  Europe  to 
rest.  It  is  no  proper  rest  for  the  mind  to  clatter 
from  town  to  town  in  the  dust  and  cinders,  and 
examine  galleries  and  architecture,  and  be  always 
meeting  people  and  lunching  and  teaing  and  dining, 
and  receiving  worrying  cables  and  letters.  And  a 
sea  voyage  on  the  Atlantic  is  of  no  use  —  voyage 
too  short,  sea  too  rough.  The  peaceful  Indian  and 
Pacific  Oceans  and  the  long  stretches  of  time  are 
the  healing  thing. 

May  2y  A.  M.  A  fair,  great  ship  in  sight,  almost 
the  first  we  have  seen  in  these  weeks  of  lonely  voy 
aging.  We  are  now  in  the  Mozambique  Channel, 
between  Madagascar  and  South  Africa,  sailing 
straight  west  for  Delagoa  Bay. 

Last  night,  the  burly  chief  engineer,  middle-aged, 
was  standing  telling  a  spirited  seafaring  tale,  and 
had  reached  the  most  exciting  place,  where  a  man 
overboard  was  washing  swiftly  astern  on  the  great 
seas,  and  uplifting  despairing  cries,  everybody 
racing  aft  in  a  frenzy  of  excitement  and  fading 
hope,  when  the  band,  which  had  been  silent  a  mo 
ment,  began  impressively  its  closing  piece,  the  Eng 
lish  national  anthem.  As  simply  as  if  he  was 
unconscious  of  what  he  was  doing,  he  stopped  his 
story,  uncovered,  laid  his  laced  cap  against  his 


Following  the  Equator  331 

breast,  and  slightly  bent  his  grizzled  head.  The 
few  bars  finished,  he  put  on  his  cap  and  took  up  his 
tale  again  as  naturally  as  if  that  interjection  of  music 
had  been  a  part  of  it.  There  was  something  touch 
ing  and  fine  about  it,  and  it  was  moving  to  reflect 
that  he  was  one  of  a  myriad,  scattered  over  every 
part  of  the  globe,  who  by  turn  were  doing  as  he  was 
doing  every  hour  of  the  twenty-four — those  awake 
doing  it  while  the  others  slept  —  those  impressive 
bars  forever  floating  up  out  of  the  various  climes, 
never  silent  and  never  lacking  reverent  listeners. 

All  that  I  remember  about  Madagascar  is  that 
Thackeray's  little  Billee  went  up  to  the  top  of  the 
mast  and  there  knelt  him  upon  his  knee,  saying, 
"I  see 

'  Jerusalem  and  Madagascar, 
And  North  and  South  Amerikee.'  " 

May  3.  Sunday.  Fifteen  or  twenty  Africanders 
who  will  end  their  voyage  to-day  and  strike  for  their 
several  homes  from  Delagoa  Bay  to-morrow,  sat  up 
singing  on  the  after-deck  in  the  moonlight  till  3 
A.  M.  Good  fun  and  wholesome.  And  the  songs 

o 

were  clean  songs,  and  some  of  them  were  hallowed 
by  tender  associations.  Finally,  in  a  pause,  a  man 
asked,  "  Have  you  heard  about  the  fellow  that  kept 
a  diary  crossing  the  Atlantic?"  It  was  a  discord,  a 
wet  blanket.  The  men  were  not  in  the  mood  for 
humorous  dirt.  The  songs  had  carried  them  to  their 
homes,  and  in  spirit  they  sat  by  those  far  hearth 
stones,  and  saw  faces  and  heard  voices  other  than 


332  Following  the  Equator 

those  that  were  about  them.  And  so  this  disposi 
tion  to  drag  in  an  old  indecent  anecdote  got  no 
welcome;  nobody  answered.  The  poor  man  hadn't 
wit  enough  to  see  that  he  had  blundered,  but  asked 
his  question  again.  Again  there  was  no  response. 
It  was  embarrassing  for  him.  In  his  confusion  he 
chose  the  wrong  course,  did  the  wrong  thing  — 
began  the  anecdote.  Began  it  in  a  deep  and  hostile 
stillness,  where  had  been  such  life  and  stir  and  warm 
comradeship  before.  He  delivered  himself  of  the 
brief  details  of  the  diary's  first  day,  and  did  it  with 
some  confidence  and  a  fair  degree  of  eagerness.  It 
fell  flat.  There  was  an  awkward  pause.  The  two 
rows  of  men  sat  like  statues.  There  was  no  move 
ment,  no  sound.  He  had  to  go  on;  there  was  no 
other  way,  at  least  none  that  an  animal  of  his  caliber 
could  think  of.  At  the  close  of  each  day's  diary 
the  same  dismal  silence  followed.  When  at  last  he 
finished  his  tale  and  sprung  the  indelicate  surprise 
which  is  wont  to  fetch  a  crash  of  laughter,  not  a 
ripple  of  sound  resulted.  It  was  as  if  the  tale  had 
been  told  to  dead  men.  After  what  seemed  a  long, 
long  time,  somebody  sighed,  somebody  else  stirred 
in  his  seat;  presently,  the  men  dropped  into  a  low 
murmur  of  confidential  talk,  each  with  his  neighbor, 
and  the  incident  was  closed.  There  were  indications 
that  that  man  was  fond  of  his  anecdote ;  that  it  was 
his  pet,  his  standby,  his  shot  that  never  missed,  his 
reputation-maker.  But  he  will  never  tell  it  again. 
No  doubt  he  will  think  of  it  sometimes,  for  that 


Following. the  Equator  333 

cannot  well  be  helped ;  and  then  he  will  see  a  pic 
ture,  and  always  the  same  picture  —  the  double 
rank  of  dead  men ;  the  vacant  deck  stretching  away 
in  dimming  perspective  beyond  them,  the  wide 
desert  of  smooth  sea  all  abroad;  the  rim  of  the 
moon  spying  from  behind  a  rag  of  black  cloud ;  the 
remote  top  of  the  mizzenmast  shearing  a  zigzag  path 
through  the  fields  of  stars  in  the  deeps  of  space ; 
and  this  soft  picture  will  remind  him  of  the  time 
that  he  sat  in  the  midst  of  it  and  told  his  poor  little 
tale  and  felt  so  lonesome  when  he  got  through. 

Fifty  Indians  and  Chinamen  asleep  in  a  big  tent 
in  the  waist  of  the  ship  forward ;  they  lie  side  by 
side  with  no  space  between;  the  former  wrapped 
up,  head  and  all,  as  in  the  Indian  streets,  the 
Chinamen  uncovered ;  the  lamp  and  things  for 
opium  smoking  in  the  center. 

A  passenger  said  it  was  ten  2-ton  truck  loads  of 
dynamite  that  lately  exploded  at  Johannesburg. 
Hundreds  killed;  he  doesn't  know  how  many; 
limbs  picked  up  for  miles  around.  Glass  shattered, 
and  roofs  swept  away  or  collapsed  200  yards  off; 
fragment  of  iron  flung  three  and  a  half  miles. 

It  occurred  at  3  P.  M. ;  at  6,  ,£65,000  had  been 
subscribed.  When  this  passenger  left,  £35,000 
had  been  voted  by  city  and  state  governments  and 
£100,000  by  citizens  and  business  corporations. 
When  news  of  the  disaster  was  telephoned  to  the 
Exchange  £35,000  were  subscribed  in  the  first  five 
minutes.  Subscribing  was  still  going  on  when  he 

22** 


334  Following  the  Equator 

left;  the  papers  had  omitted  the  names,  only  the 
amounts  —  too  many  names;  not  enough  room. 
,£100,000  subscribed  by  companies  and  citizens;  if 
this  is  true,  it  must  be  what  they  call  in  Australia 
"  a  record  " — -the  biggest  instance  of  a  spontaneous 
outpoor  for  charity  in  history,  considering  the  size 
of  the  population  it  was  drawn  from,  $8  or  $10  for 
each  white  resident,  babies  at  the  breast  included. 

Monday,  May  4..  Steaming  slowly  in  the  stupen 
dous  Delagoa  Bay,  its  dim  arms  stretching  far  away 
and  disappearing  on  both  sides.  It  could  furnish 
plenty  of  room  for  all  the  ships  in  the  world,  but  it 
is  shoal.  The  lead  has  given  us  3^  fathoms  several 
times,  and  we  are  drawing  that,  lacking  6  inches. 

A  bold  headland  —  precipitous  wall,  150  feet 
high,  very  strong,  red  color,  stretching  a  mile  or 
so.  A  man  said  it  was  Portuguese  blood  —  battle 
fought  here  with  the  natives  last  year.  I  think  this 
doubtful.  Pretty  cluster  of  houses  on  the  tableland 
above  the  red  —  and  rolling  stretches  of  grass  and 
groups  of  trees,  like  England. 

The  Portuguese  have  the  railroad  (one  passenger 
train  a  day)  to  the  border — 70  miles  —  then  the 
Netherlands  Company  have  it.  Thousands  of  tons 
of  freight  on  the  shore  —  no  cover.  This  is  Portu 
guese  all  over — -indolence,  piousness,  poverty,  im 
potence. 

Crews  of  small  boats  and  tugs,  all  jet  black  woolly 
heads  and  very  muscular. 

Winter.     The  South  African  winter  is  just  begin- 


Following  the  Equator  33  S 

ning  now,  but  nobody  but  an  expert  can  tell  it  from 
summer.  However,  I  am  tired  of  summer;  we 
have  had  it  unbroken  for  eleven  months.  We  spent 
the  afternoon  on  shore,  Delagoa  Bay.  A  small 
town  —  no  sights.  No  carriages.  Three  'rickshas, 
but  we  couldn't  get  them  —  apparently  private. 
These  Portuguese  are  a  rich  brown,  like  some  of 
the  Indians.  Some  of  the  blacks  have  the  long 
horse-heads  and  very  long  chins  of  the  negroes  of 
the  picture-books;  but  most  of  them  are  exactly 
like  the  negroes  of  our  Southern  States  —  round 
faces,  flat  noses,  good-natured,  and  easy  laughers. 

Flocks  of  black  women  passed  along,  carrying 
outrageously  heavy  bags  of  freight  on  their  heads  — 
the  quiver  of  their  leg  as  the  foot  was  planted  and 
the  strain  exhibited  by  their  bodies  showed  what  a 
tax  upon  their  strength  the  load  was.  They  were 
stevedores,  and  doing  full  stevedore's  work.  They 
were  very  erect  when  unladen  —  from  carrying 
weights  on  their  heads  —  just  like  the  Indian  women. 
It  gives  them  a  proud,  fine  carriage. 

Sometimes  one  saw  a  woman  carrying  on  her 
head  a  laden  and  top-heavy  basket  the  shape  of  an 
inverted  pyramid  —  its  top  the  size  of  a  soup-plate, 
its  base  the  diameter  of  a  teacup.  It  required  nice 
balancing  —  and  got  it. 

No  bright  colors;  yet  there  were  a  good  many 
Hindoos. 

The  Second  Class  Passenger  came  over  as  usual 
at  "lights  out"  (u)  and  we  lounged  along  the 


336  Following  the  Equator 

spacious  vague  solitudes  of  the  deck  and  smoked  the 
peaceful  pipe  and  talked.  He  told  me  an  incident 
in  Mr.  Barnum's  life  which  was  evidently  character 
istic  of  that  great  showman  in  several  ways : 

This  was  Barnum's  purchase  of  Shakespeare's 
birthplace,  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago.  The  Second 
Class  Passenger  was  in  Jamrach's  employ  at  the  time 
and  knew  Barnum  well.  He  said  the  thing  began  in 
this  way.  One  morning  Barnum  and  Jamrach  were 
in  Jamrach's  little  private  snuggery  back  of  the 
wilderness  of  caged  monkeys  and  snakes  and  other 
commonplaces  of  Jamrach's  stock  in  trade,  refresh 
ing  themselves  after  an  arduous  stroke  of  business, 
Jamrach  with  something  orthodox,  Barnum  with 
something  heterodox  — .for  Barnum  was  a  teetotaler. 
The  stroke  of  business  was  in  the  elephant  line. 
Jamrach  had  contracted  to  deliver  to  Barnum  in 
^New  York  18  elephants  for  $360,000  in  time  for  the 
next  season's  opening.  Then  it  occurred  to  Mr. 
Barnum  that  he  needed  a  "  card."  He  suggested 
Jumbo.  Jamrach  said  he  would  have  to  think  of 
something  else  —  Jumbo  couldn't  be  had;  the  Zoo 
wouldn't  part  with  that  elephant.  Barnum  said  he 
was  willing  to  pay  a  fortune  for  Jumbo  if  he  could 
get  him.  Jamrach  said  it  was  no  use  to  think  about 
it;  that  Jumbo  was  as  popular  as  the  Prince  of 
Wales  and  the  Zoo  wouldn't  dare  to  sell  him ;  all 
England  would  be  outraged  at  the  idea;  Jumbo  was 
an  English  institution ;  he  was  part  of  the  national 
glory;  one  might  as  well  think  of  buying  the  Nelson 


Following  the  Equator  337 

monument.  Barnum  spoke  up  with  vivacity  and 
said : 

41  It's  a  first-rate  idea.     777  buy  the  Monument." 

Jamrach  was  speechless  for  a  second.  Then  he 
said,  like  one  ashamed: 

"You  caught  me.  I  was  napping.  For  a  mo 
ment  I  thought  you  were  in  earnest." 

Barnum  said  pleasantly : 

"I  was  in  earnest.  I  know  they  won't  sell  it, 
but  no  matter,  I  will  not  throw  away  a  good  idea  for 
all  that.  All  I  want  is  a  big  advertisement.  I  will 
keep  the  thing  in  mind,  and  if  nothing  better  turns 
up  I  will  offer  to  buy  it.  That  will  answer  every 
purpose.  It  will  furnish  me  a  couple  of  colunryis  of 
gratis  advertising  in  every  English  and  American 
paper  for  a  couple  of  months,  and  give  my  show 
the  biggest  boom  a  show  ever  had  in  this  world." 

Jamrach  started  to  deliver  a  burst  of  admiration, 
but  was  interrupted  by  Barnum,  who  said : 

"Here  is  a  state  of  things!  England  ought  to 
blush." 

His  eye  had  fallen  upon  something  in  the  news 
paper.  He  read  it  through  to  himself,  then  read  it 
aloud.  It  said  that  the  house  that  Shakespeare  was 
born  in  at  Stratford-on-Avon  was  falling  gradually 
to  ruin  through  neglect;  that  the  room  where  the 
poet  first  saw  the  light  was  now  serving  as  a  butcher's 
shop;  that  all  appeals  to  England  to  contribute 
money  (the  requisite  sum  stated)  to  buy  and  repair 
the  house  and  place  it  in  the  care  of  salaried  and 
22,, 


338  Following  the  Equator 

trustworthy  keepers  had  fallen  resultless.  Then 
Barnum  said : 

"  There's  my  chance.  Let  Jumbo  and  the  Monu 
ment  alone  for  the  present — they'll  keep.  I'll  buy 
Shakespeare's  house.  I'll  set  it  up  in  my  Museum 
in  New  York  and  put  a  glass  case  around  it  and 
make  a  sacred  thing  of  it;  and  you'll  see  all  America 
flock  there  to  worship ;  yes,  and  pilgrims  from  the 
whole  earth;  and  I'll  make  them  take  their  hats  off, 
too.  In  America  we  know  how  to  value  anything  that 
Shakespeare's  touch  has  made  holy.  You'll  see." 

In  conclusion  the  S.  C.  P.  said: 

"  That  is  the  way  the  thing  came  about.  Barnum 
did  buy  Shakespeare's  house.  He  paid  the  price 
asked,  and  received  the  properly  attested  documents 
of  sale.  Then  there  was  an  explosion,  I  can  tell 
you.  England  rose!  What,  the  birthplace  of  the 
master-genius  of  all  the  ages  and  all  the  climes  — 
that  priceless  possession  of  Britain  —  to  be  carted 
out  of  the  country  like  so  much  old  lumber  and  set 
up  for  sixpenny  desecration  in  a  Yankee  show-shop 

—  the  idea  was  not  to  be  tolerated  for  a  moment. 
England   rose   in   her  indignation,  and   Barnum  was 
glad    to    relinquish    his    prize    and    offer    apologies. 
However,    he    stood    out    for    a    compromise ;    he 
claimed  a  concession  —  England  must  let  him  have 
Jumbo.     And    England    consented,  but   not   cheer 
fully." 

It  shows  how,  by  help  of  time,  a  story  can  grow 

—  even  after  Barnum  has  had  the  first  innings  in  the 


Following  the  Equator  339 

telling  of  it.  Mr.  Barnum  told  me  the  story  himself, 
years  ago.  He  said  that  the  permission  to  buy 
Jumbo  was  not  a  concession;  the  purchase  was 
made  and  the  animal  delivered  before  the  public 
knew  anything  about  it.  Also,  that  the  securing  of 
Jumbo  was  all  the  advertisement  he  needed.  It 
produced  many  columns  of  newspaper  talk,  free  of 
cost,  and  he  was  satisfied.  He  said  that  if  he  had 
failed  to  get  Jumbo  he  would  have  caused  his  notion 
of  buying  the  Nelson  Monument  to  be  treacherously 
smuggled  into  print  by  some  trusty  friend,  and  after 
he  had  gotten  a  few  hundred  pages  of  gratuitous 
advertising  out  of  it,  he  would  have  come  out  with  a 
blundering,  obtuse,  but  warm-hearted  letter  of  apol 
ogy,  and  in  a  postscript  to  it  would  have  na'fvely 
proposed  to  let  the  Monument  go,  and  take  Stone- 
henge  in  place  of  it  at  the  same  price. 

It  was  his  opinion  that  such  a  letter,  written  with 
well-simulated  asinine  innocence  and  gush,  would 
have  gotten  his  ignorance  and  stupidity  an  amount 
of  newspaper  abuse  worth  six  fortunes  to  him,  and 
not  purchasable  for  twice  the  money. 

I  knew  Mr.  Barnum  well,  and  I  placed  every  con 
fidence  in  the  account  which  he  gave  me  of  the 
Shakespeare  birthplace  episode.  He  said  he  found 
the  house  neglected  and  going  to  decay,  and  he 
inquired  into  the  matter  and  was  told  that  many 
times  earnest  efforts  had  been  made  to  raise  money 
for  its  proper  repair  and  preservation,  but  without 
success.  He  then  proposed  to  buy  it.  The  propo- 


340  Following  the  Equator 

sition  was  entertained,  and  a  price  named  — 
$50,000,  I  think;  but  whatever  it  was,  Barnum  paid 
the  money  down,  without  remark,  and  the  papers 
were  drawn  up  and  executed.  He  said  that  it  had 
been  his  purpose  to  set  up  the  house  in  his  Museum, 
keep  it  in  repair,  protect  it  from  name-scribblers 
and  other  desecrators,  and  leave  it  by  bequest  to 
the  safe  and  perpetual  guardianship  of  the  Smith 
sonian  Institute  at  Washington. 

But  as  soon  as  it  was  found  that  Shakespeare's 
house  had  passed  into  foreign  hands  and  was  going 
to  be  carried  across  the  ocean,  England  was  stirred 
as  no  appeal  from  the  custodians  of  the  relic  had 
ever  stirred  England  before,  and  protests  came  flow 
ing  in  —  and  money,  too,  to  stop  the  outrage. 
Offers  of  re-purchase  were  made  —  offers  of  double 
the  money  that  Mr.  Barnum  had  paid  for  the  house. 
He  handed  the  house  back,  but  took  only  the  sum 
which  it  had  cost  him  —  but  on  the  condition  that 
an  endowment  sufficient  for  the  future  safe-guarding 
and  maintenance  of  the  sacred  relic  should  be 
raised.  This  condition  was  fulfilled. 

That  was  Barnum' s  account  of  the  episode;  and 
to  the  end  of  his  days  he  claimed  with  pride  and 
satisfaction  that  not  England,  but  America  —  repre 
sented  by  him  —  saved  the  birthplace  of  Shakespeare 
from  destruction. 

At  3  P.  M.,  May  5th,  the  ship  slowed  down,  off 
the  land,  and  thoughtful!/  and  cautiously  picked  her 
way  into  the  snug  harbor  of  Durban,  South  Africa- 


CHAPTER  XXIX. 

In  statesmanship  get  the  formalities  right,  never  mind  about  the  moralities 
—  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

rROM  DIARY  : 
Royal  Hotel.  Comfortable,  good  table,  good 
service  of  natives  and  Madrasis.  Curious  jumble  of 
modern  and  ancient  city  and  village,  primitiveness 
and  the  other  thing.  Electric  bells,  but  they  don't 
ring.  Asked  why  they  didn't,  the  watchman  in  the 
office  said  he  thought  they  must  be  out  of  order;  he 
thought  so  because  some  of  them  rang,  but  most  of 
them  didn't.  Wouldn't  it  be  a  good  idea  to  put 
them  in  order?  He  hesitated  —  like  one  who  isn't 
quite  sure  —  then  conceded  the  point. 

May  /.  A  bang  on  the  door  at  6.  Did  I  want 
my  boots  cleaned?  Fifteen  minutes  later  another 
bang.  Did  we  want  coffee?  Fifteen  later,  bang 
again,  my  wife's  bath  ready;  15  later,  my  bath 
ready.  Two  other  bangs ;  I  forget  what  they  were 
about.  Then  lots  of  shouting  back  and  forth,  among 
the  servants,  just  as  in  an  Indian  hotel. 

Evening.  At  4  P.M.  it  was  unpleasantly  warm. 
Half-hour  after  puiuet  one  needed  a  spring  overcoat ; 
by  8  a  winter  one 

(341) 


342  Following  the  Equator 

Durban  is  a  neat  and  clean  town.  One  notices 
that  without  having  his  attention  called  to  it. 

'Rickshas  drawn  by  splendidly  built  black  Zulus, 
so  overflowing  with  strength,  seemingly,  that  it  is  a 
pleasure,  not  a  pain,  to  see  them  snatch  a  'ricksha 
along.  They  smile  and  laugh  and  show  their  teeth 

—  a   good-natured  lot.      Not  allowed  to  drink;   2s 
per  hour  for  one  person ;  3s  for  two ;   3d  for  a  course 

—  one  person. 

The  chameleon  in  the  hotel  court.  He  is  fat  and 
indolent  and  contemplative ;  but  is  business-like  and 
capable  when  a  fly  comes  about — reaches  out  a 
tongue  like  a  teaspoon  and  takes  him  in.  He  gums 
his  tongue  first.  He  is  always  pious,  in  his  looks. 
And  pious  and  thankful  both,  when  Providence  or 
one  of  us  sends  him  a  fly.  He  has  a  froggy  head, 
and  a  back  like  a  new  grave  —  for  shape ;  and  hands 
like  a  bird's  toes  that  have  been  frost-bitten.  But 
his  eyes  are  his  exhibition  feature.  A  couple  of 
skinny  cones  project  from  the  sides  of  his  head,  with 
a  wee  shiny  bead  of  an  eye  set  in  the  apex  of  each ; 
and  these  cones  turn  bodily  like  pivot-guns  and  point 
every-which-way,  and  they  are  independent  of  each 
other ;  each  has  its  own  exclusive  machinery.  When 
I  am  behind  him  and  C.  in  front  of  him,  he  whirls 
one  eye  rearwards  and  the  other  forwards  —  which 
gives  him  a  most  Congressional  expression  (one 
eye  on  the  constituency  and  one  on  the  swag)  ;  and 
then  if  something  happens  above  and  below  him  he 
shoots  out  one  eye  upward  like  a  telescope  and  the 


Following  the  Equator  343 

other  downward  —  and  this  changes  his  expression, 
but  does  not  improve  it. 

Natives  must  not  be  out  after  the  curfew  bell  with 
out  a  pass.  In  Natal  there  are  ten  blacks  to  one 
white. 

Sturdy  plump  creatures  are  the  women.  They 
comb  their  wool  up  to  a  peak  and  keep  it  in  position 
by  stiffening  it  with  brown-red  clay  —  half  of  this 
tower  colored,  denotes  engagement;  the  whole  of 
it  colored,  denotes  marriage. 

None  but  heathen  Zulus  on  the  police ;  Christian 
ones  not  allowed. 

May  p.  A  drive  yesterday  with  friends  over  the 
Berea.  Very  fine  roads  and  lofty,  overlooking  the 
whole  town,  the  harbor,  and  the  sea  —  beautiful 
views.  Residences  all  along,  set  in  the  midst  of 
green  lawns  with  shrubs  and  generally  one  or  two 
intensely  red  outbursts  of  poinsettia  —  the  flaming 
splotch  of  blinding  red  a  stunning  contrast  with  the 
world  of  surrounding  green.  The  cactus  tree  — 
candelabrum-like ;  and  one  twisted  like  gray  writh 
ing  serpents.  The  "  flat-crown  "  (should  be  flat- 
roof)  —  half  a  dozen  naked  branches  full  of  elbows, 
slant  upward  like  artificial  supports,  and  fling  a  roof 
of  delicate  foliage  out  in  a  horizontal  platform  as  flat 
as  a  floor;  and  you  look  up  through  this  thin  floor 
as  through  a  green  cobweb  or  veil.  The  branches 
are  japanesic.  All  about  you  is  a  bewildering 
variety  of  unfamiliar  and  beautiful  trees;  one  sort 
wonderfully  dense  foliage  and  very  dark  green  —  so 


344  Following  the  Equator 

dark  that  you  notice  it  at  once,  notwithstanding  there 
are  so  many  orange  trees.  The  "flamboyant" — 
not  in  flower,  now,  but  when  in  flower  lives  up  to 
its  name,  we  are  told.  Another  tree  with  a  lovely 
upright  tassel  scattered  among  its  rich  greenery,  red 
and  glowing  as  a  fire-coal.  Here  and  there  a  gum- 
tree;  half  a  dozen  lofty  Norfolk  Island  pines  lift 
ing  their  fronded  arms  skyward.  Groups  of  tall 
bamboo. 

Saw  one  bird.  Not  many  birds  here,  and  they 
have  no  music  —  and  the  flowers  not  much  smell, 
they  grow  so  fast. 

Everything  neat  and  trim  and  clean  like  the  town. 
The  loveliest  trees  and  the  greatest  variety  I  have 
ever  seen  anywhere,  except  approaching  Darjeeling. 
Have  not  heard  any  one  call  Natal  the  garden  of 
South  Africa,  but  that  is  what  it  probably  is. 

It  was  when  Bishop  of  Natal  that  Colenso  raised 
such  a  storm  in  the  religious  world.  The  concerns 
of  religion  are  a  vital  matter  here  yet.  A  vigilant 
eye  is  kept  upon  Sunday.  Museums  and  other 
dangerous  resorts  are  not  allowed  to  be  open.  You 
may  sail  on  the  Bay,  but  it  is  wicked  to  play  cricket. 
For  a  while  a  Sunday  concert  was  tolerated,  upon 
condition  that  it  must  be  admission  free  and  the 
money  taken  by  collection.  But  the  collection  was 
alarmingly  large  and  that  stopped  the  matter.  They 
are  particular  about  babies.  A  clergyman  would 
not  bury  a  child  according  to  the  sacred  rites  because 
it  had  not  been  baptized.  The  Hindoo  is  more 


Following  the  Equator  345 

liberal.  He  burns  no  child  under  three,  holding  that 
it  does  not  need  purifying. 

The  King  of  the  Zulus,  a  fine  fellow  of  30,  was 
banished  six  years  ago  for  a  term  of  seven  years. 
He  is  occupying  Napoleon's  old  stand  —  St.  Helena. 
The  people  are  a  little  nervous  about  having  him 
come  back,  and  they  may  well  be,  for  Zulu  kings 
have  been  terrible  people  sometimes  —  like  Tchaka, 
Dingaan,  and  Cetewayo. 

There  is  a  large  Trappist  monastery  two  hours 
from  Durban,  over  the  country  roads,  and  in 
company  with  Mr.  Milligan  and  Mr.  Hunter,  gen 
eral  manager  of  the  Natal  Government  railways, 
who  knew  the  heads  of  it,  we  went  out  to  see  it. 

There  it  all  was,  just  as  one  reads  about  it  in 
books  and  cannot  believe  that  it  is  so  —  I  mean  the 
rough,  hard  work,  the  impossible  hours,  the  scanty 
food,  the  coarse  raiment,  the  Maryborough  beds,  the 
tabu  of  human  speech,  of  social  intercourse,  of  re 
laxation,  of  amusement,  of  entertainment,  of  the 
presence  of  woman  in  the  men's  establishment. 
There  it  all  was.  It  was  not  a  dream,  it  was  not  a 
lie.  And  yet  with  the  fact  before  one's  face  it  was 
still  incredible.  It  is  such  a  sweeping  suppression  of 
human  instincts,  such  an  extinction  of  the  man  a? 
an  individual. 

La  Trappe  must  have  known  the  human  race  well. 
The  scheme  which  he  invented  hunts  out  everything 
that  a  man  wants  aid.  values  —  and  withholds  it  from 
him.  Apparently  there  is  no  detail  that  can  help 


346  Following  the  Equator 

make  life  worth  living  that  has  not  been  carefully 
ascertained  and  placed  out  of  the  Trappist's  reach. 
La  Trappe  must  have  known  that  there  were  men 
who  would  enjoy  this  kind  of  misery,  but  how  did 
he  find  it  out? 

If  he  had  consulted  you  or  me  he  would  have  been 
told  that  his  scheme  lacked  too  many  attractions; 
that  it  was  impossible ;  that  it  could  never  be  floated. 
But  there  in  the  monastery  was  proof  that  he  knew 
the  human  race  better  than  it  knew  itself.  He  set 
his  foot  upon  every  desire  that  a  man  has  —  yet  he 
floated  his  project,  and  it  has  prospered  for  two 
hundred  years,  and  will  go  on  prospering  forever, 
no  doubt. 

Man  likes  personal  distinction  —  there  in  the  mon 
astery  it  is  obliterated.  He  likes  delicious  food  — 
there  he  gets  beans  and  bread  and  tea,  and  not 
enough  of  it.  He  likes  to  lie  softly  —  there  he  lies 
on  a  sand  mattress,  and  has  a  pillow  and  a  blanket, 
but  no  sheet.  When  he  is  dining,  in  a  great  com 
pany  of  friends,  he  likes  to  laugh  and  chat  —  there  a 
monk  reads  a  holy  book  aloud  during  meals,  and 
nobody  speaks  or  laughs.  When  a  man  has  a  hun 
dred  friends  about  him,  evenings,  he  likes  to  have  a 
good  time  and  run  late  — there  he  and  the  rest  go 
silently  to  bed  at  8 ;  and  in  the  dark,  too ;  there  is 
but  a  loose  brown  robe  to  discard,  there  are  no  night 
clothes  to  put  on,  a  light  is  not  needed.  Man  likes 
to  lie  abed  late  —  there  he  gets  up  once  or  twice  in 
the  night  to  perform  some  religious  office,  and  gets 


Following  the  Equator  347 

up  finally  for  the  day  at  two  in  the  morning.  Man 
likes  light  work  or  none  at  all  —  there  he  labors  all 
day  in  the  field,  or  in  the  blacksmith  shop  or  the  other 
shops  devoted  to  the  mechanical  trades,  such  as 
shoemaking,  saddlery,  carpentry,  and  so  on.  Man 
likes  the  society  of  girls  and  women  —  there  he  never 
has  it.  He  likes  to  have  his  children  about  him,  and 
pet  them  and  play  with  them  —  there  he  has  none. 
He  likes  billiards  —  there  is  no  table  there.  He  likes 
outdoor  sports  and  indoor  dramatic  and  musical  and 
social  entertainments  —  there  are  none  there.  He 
likes  to  bet  on  things  —  I  was  told  that  betting  is  for 
bidden  there.  When  a  man's  temper  is  up  he  likes 
to  pour  it  out  upon  somebody  —  there  this  is  not 
allowed.  A  man  likes  animals  —  pets;  there  are 
none  there.  He  likes  to  smoke  —  there  he  cannot 
doit.  He  likes  to  read  the  news  —  no  papers  or 
magazines  come  there.  A  man  likes  to  know  how 
his  parents  and  brothers  and  sisters  are  getting  along 
when  he  is  away,  and  if  they  miss  him  —  there  he 
cannot  know.  A  man  likes  a  pretty  house,  and 
pretty  furniture,  and  pretty  things,  and  pretty 
colors — -there  he  has  nothing  but  naked  aridity  and 
somber  colors.  A  man  likes  —  name  it  yourself: 
whatever  it  is,  it  is  absent  from  that  place. 

From  what  I  could  learn,  all  that  a  man  gets  for 
this  is  merely  the  saving  of  his  soul. 

It  all  seems  strange,  incredible,  impossible.  But 
La  Trappe  knew  the  race.  He  knew  the  powerful 
attraction  of  unattractiveness :  he  knew  that  no  life 


348  Following  the  Equator 

could  be  imagined,  howsoever  comfortless  and   for 
bidding,  but  somebody  would  want  to  try  it. 

This  parent  establishment  of  Germans  began  its 
work  fifteen  years  ago,  strangers,  poor,  and  unen- 
couraged;  it  owns  15,000  acres  of  land  now,  and 
raises  grain  and  fruit,  and  makes  wines,  and  manu 
factures  all  manner  of  things,  and  has  native  appren 
tices  in  its  shops,  and  sends  them  forth  able  to  read 
and  write,  and  also  well  equipped  to  earn  their  living 
by  their  trades.  And  this  young  establishment  has 
set  up  eleven  branches  in  South  Africa,  and  in  them 
they  are  Christianizing  and  educating  and  teaching 
wage-yielding  mechanical  trades  to  1, 200  boys  and 
girls.  Protestant  Missionary  work  is  coldly  regarded 
by  the  commercial  white  colonists  all  over  the  heathen 
world,  as  a  rule,  and  its  product  is  nicknamed  "  rice- 
Christians  "  (occupationless  incapables  who  join  the 
Church  for  revenue  only) ,  but  I  think  it  would  be 
difficult  to  pick  a  flaw  in  the  work  of  these  Catholic 
monks,  and  I  believe  that  the  disposition  to  attempt 
it  has  not  shown  itself. 

Tuesday,  May  12.  Transvaal  politics  in  a  con 
fused  condition.  First  the  sentencing  of  the  Johan 
nesburg  Reformers  startled  England  by  its  severity; 
on  the  top  of  this  came  Kruger's  exposure  of  the 
cipher  correspondence,  which  showed  that  the  in 
vasion  of  the  Transvaal,  with  the  design  of  seizing 
that  country  and  adding  it  to  the  British  Empire, 
was  planned  by  Cecil  Rhodes  and  Beit  —  which 
made  a  revulsion  in  English  feeling,  and  brought 


Following  the  Equator  349 

out  a  storm  against  Rhodes  and  the  Chartered  Com 
pany  for  degrading  British  honor.  For  a  good 
while  I  couldn't  seem  to  get  at  a  clear  comprehen 
sion  of  it,  it  was  so  tangled.  But  at  last  by  patient 
study  I  have  managed  it,  I  believe.  As  I  under 
stand  it,  the  Uitlanders  and  other  Dutchmen  were 
dissatisfied  because  the  English  would  not  allow 
them  to  take  any  part  in  the  government  except  to 
pay  taxes.  Next,  as  I  understand  it,  Dr.  Kruger 
and  Dr.  Jameson,  not  having  been  able  to  make  the 
medical  business  pay,  made  a  raid  into  Matabeleland 
with  the  intention  of  capturing  the  capital,  Johannes 
burg,  and  holding  the  women  and  children  to  ransom 
until  the  Uitlanders  and  the  other  Boers  should  grant 
to  them  and  the  Chartered  Company  the  political 
rights  which  had  been  withheld  from  them.  They 
would  have  succeeded  in  this  great  scheme,  as  I 
understand  it,  but  for  the  interference  of  Cecil 
Rhodes  and  Mr.  Beit,  and  other  Chiefs  of  the 
Matabele,  who  persuaded  their  countrymen  to  revolt 
and  throw  off  their  allegiance  to  Germany.  This, 
in  turn,  as  I  understand  it,  provoked  the  King  of 
Abyssinia  to  destroy  the  Italian  army  and  fall  back 
upon  Johannesburg;  this  at  the  instigation  of 
Rhodes,  to  bull  the  stock  market. 

23** 


CHAPTER  XXX. 

Every  one  is  a  moon,  and  has  a  dark  side  which  he  never  shows  to  any- 
body.— Pudd'nkead  Wilson  s  New  Calendar. 

WHEN  I  scribbled  in  my  note-book  a  year  ago 
the  paragraph  which  ends  the  preceding 
chapter,  it  was  meant  to  indicate,  in  an  extravagant 
form,  two  things:  the  conflicting  nature  of  the  in 
formation  conveyed  by  the  citizen  to  the  stranger 
concerning  South  African  politics,  and  the  resulting 
confusion  created  in  the  stranger's  mind  thereby. 

But  it  does  not  seem  so  very  extravagant  now. 
Nothing  could  in  that  disturbed  and  excited  time 
make  South  African  politics  clear  or  quite  rational 
to  the  citizen  of  the  country  because  his  personal 
interest  and  his  political  prejudices  were  in  his  way; 
and  nothing  could  make  those  politics  clear  or  ra 
tional  to  the  stranger,  the  sources  of  his  information 
being  such  as  they  were. 

I  was  in  South  Africa  some  little  time.  When  I 
arrived  there  the  political  pot  was  boiling  fiercely. 
Four  months  previously,  Jameson  had  plunged  over 
the  Transvaal  border  with  about  600  armed  horsemen 
at  his  back,  to  go  to  the  "  relief  of  the  women  and 
children"  of  Johannesburg;  on  the  fourth  day  of 


Following  the  Equator  351 

his  march  the  Boers  had  defeated  him  in  battle,  and 
carried  him  and  his  men  to  Pretoria,  the  capital,  as 
prisoners ;  the  Boer  government  had  turned  Jameson 
and  his  officers  over  to  the  British  government  for 
trial,  and  shipped  them  to  England;  next,  it  had  ar 
rested  64  important  citizens  of  Johannesburg  as  raid- 
conspirators,  condemned  their  four  leaders  to  death, 
then  commuted  the  sentences,  and  now  the  64  were 
waiting,  in  jail,  for  further  results.  Before  mid 
summer  they  were  all  out  excepting  two,  who  re 
fused  to  sign  the  petitions  for  release;  58  had  been 
fined  $10,000  each  and  enlarged,  and  the  four 
leaders  had  gotten  off  with  fines  of  $125,000  each 
—  with  permanent  exile  added,  in  one  case. 

Those  were  wonderfully  interesting  days  for  a 
stranger,  and  I  was  glad  to  be  in  the  thick  of  the 
excitement.  Everybody  was  talking,  and  I  expected 
to  understand  the  whole  of  one  side  of  it  in  a  very 
little  while. 

I  was  disappointed.  There  were  singularities, 
perplexities,  unaccountabilities  about  it  which  I  was 
not  able  to  master.  I  had  no  personal  access  to 
Boers- — their  side  was  a  secret  to  me,  aside  from 
what  I  was  able  to  gather  of  it  from  published  state 
ments.  My  sympathies  were  soon  with  the  Reform 
ers  in  the  Pretoria  jail,  with  their  friends,  and  with 
their  cause.  By  diligent  inquiry  in  Johannesburg  I 
found  out —  apparently  —  all  the  details  of  their  side 
of  the  quarrel  except  one  —  what  they  expected  to 
accomplish  by  an  armed  rising 


352  Following  the  Equator 

Nobody  seemed  to  know. 

The  reason  why  the  Reformers  were  discontented 
and  wanted  some  changes  made,  seemed  quite  clear. 
In  Johannesburg  it  was  claimed  that  the  Uitlanders 
(strangers,  foreigners)  paid  thirteen-fifteenths  of  the 
Transvaal  taxes,  yet  got  little  or  nothing  for  it. 
Their  city  had  no  charter ;  it  had  no  municipal  gov 
ernment;  it  could  levy  no  taxes  for  drainage,  water- 
supply,  paving,  cleaning,  sanitation,  policing.  There 
was  a  police  force,  but  it  was  composed  of  Boers ;  it 
was  furnished  by  the  State  Government,  and  the  city 
had  no  control  over  it.  Mining  was  very  costly; 
the  government  enormously  increased  the  cost  by 
putting  burdensome  taxes  upon  the  mines,  the  out 
put,  the  machinery,  the  buildings;  by  burdensome 
imposts  upon  incoming  materials;  by  burdensome 
railway-freight  charges.  Hardest  of  all  to  bear,  the 
government  reserved  to  itself  a  monopoly  in  that 
essential  thing,  dynamite,  and  burdened  it  with  an 
extravagant  price.  The  detested  Hollander  from 
over  the  water  held  all  the  public  offices.  The  gov 
ernment  was  rank  with  corruption.  The  Uitlander 
had  no  vote,  and  must  live  in  the  State  ten  or  twelve 
years  before  he  could  get  one.  He  was  not  repre 
sented  in  the  Raad  (legislature)  that  oppressed  him 
and  fleeced  him.  Religion  was  not  free.  There 
were  no  schools  where  the  teaching  was  in  English, 
yet  the  great  majority  of  the  white  population  of  the 
State  knew  no  tongue  but  that.  The  State  would 
not  pass  a  liquor  law ;  but  allowed  a  great  trade  in 


Following  the  Equator  353 


cheap  vile  brandy  among  the  blacks,  with  the  result 
that  25  per  cent,  of  the  50,000  blacks  employed  in 
the  mines  were  usually  drunk  and  incapable  of 
working. 

There  —  it  was  plain  enough  that  the  reasons  for 
wanting  some  changes  made  were  abundant  and 
reasonable,  if  this  statement  of  the  existing  grievances 
was  correct. 

What  the  Uitlanders  wanted  was  reform  —  under 
the  existing  Republic. 

What  they  proposed  to  do  was  to  secure  these  re 
forms  by  prayer,  petition,  and  persuasion. 

They  did  petition.  Also,  they  issued  a  Manifesto, 
whose  very  first  note  is  a  bugle-blast  of  loyalty: 
11  We  want  the  establishment  of  this  Republic  as  a 
true  Republic." 

Could  anything  be  clearer  than  the  Uitlanders' 
statement  of  the  grievances  and  oppressions  under 
wrhich  they  were  suffering?  Could  anything  be  more 
legal  and  citizenlike  and  law-respecting  than  their 
attitude  as  expressed  by  their  Manifesto?  No. 
Those  things  were  perfectly  clear,  perfectly  compre 
hensible. 

But  at  this  point  the  puzzles  and  riddles  and  con 
fusions  begin  to  flock  in.  You  have  arrived  at  a 
place  which  you  cannot  quite  understand. 

For  you  find  that  as  a  preparation  for  this  loyal, 

lawful,  and  in  every  way  unexceptionable  attempt  to 

persuade  the  government  to  right  their  grievances, 

the  Uitlanders  had   smuggled  a  Maxim  gun  or  two 

23  »» 


354  Following  the  Equator 

and  1,500  muskets  into  the  town,  concealed  in  oil 
tanks  and  coal  cars,  and  had  begun  to  form  and  drill 
military  companies  composed  of  clerks,  merchants, 
and  citizens  generally. 

What  was  their  idea?  Did  they  suppose  that  the 
Boers  would  attack  them  for  petitioning  for  redress  ? 
That  could  not  be. 

Did  they  suppose  that  the  Boers  would  attack 
them  even  for  issuing  a  Manifesto  demanding  relief 
under  the  existing  Government? 

Yes,  they  apparently  believed  so,  because  the  air 
was  full  of  talk  of  forcing  the  government  to  grant 
redress  if  it  were  not  granted  peacefully. 

The  Reformers  were  men  of  high  intelligence.  If 
they  were  in  earnest,  they  were  taking  extraordinary 
risks.  They  had  enormously  valuable  properties  to 
defend;  their  town  was  full  of  women  and  children; 
their  mines  and  compounds  were  packed  with  thou 
sands  upon  thousands  of  sturdy  blacks.  If  the  Boers 
attacked,  the  mines  would  close,  the  blacks  would 
swarm  out  and  get  drunk;  riot  and  conflagration 
and  the  Boers  together  might  lose  the  Reformers 
more  in  a  day,  in  money,  blood,  and  suffering,  than 
the  desired  political  relief  could  compensate  in  ten 
years  if  they  won. the  fight  and  secured  the  reforms. 

It  is  May,  iSo^Vnow;  a  year  has  gone  by,  and 
the  confusions  of  that  day  have  been  to  a  consider 
able  degree  cleared  away.  Mr.  Cecil  Rhodes,  Dr. 
Jameson,  and  others  responsible  for  the  Raid,  have 
testified  before  the  Parliamentary  Committee  of  In- 


x  \v  * 

v^  •  if 

Following  the  Equator  355 

quiry  in  London,  and  so  have  Mr.  Lionel  Phillips  and 
other  Johannesburg  Reformers,  monthly-nurses  of 
the  Revolution  which  was  born  dead.  These  testi 
monies  have  thrown  light.  Three  books  have  added 
much  to  this  light:  "South  Africa  As  It  Is,"  by 
Mr.  Statham,  an  able  writer  partial  to  the  Boers; 
1  The  Story  of  an  African  Crisis,"  by  Mr.  Garrett, 
a  brilliant  writer  partial  to  Rhodes  ;  and  "A  Woman's 
Part  in  a  Revolution,"  by  Mrs.  John  Hayes  Ham 
mond,  a  vigorous  and  vivid  diarist,  partial  to  the 
Reformers.  By  liquefying  the  evidence  of  the 
prejudiced  books  and  of  the  prejudiced  parliamentary 
witnesses  and  stirring  the  whole  together  and  pour 
ing  it  into  my  own  (prejudiced)  moulds,  I  have  got 
at  the  truth  of  that  puzzling  South  African  situation, 
which  is  this: 

1 .  The  capitalists  and  other  chief  men  of  Johan 
nesburg  were  fretting  under   various    political    and 
financial  burdens  imposed  by  the   state   (the  South 
African    Republic,    sometimes   called    "  the    Trans 
vaal  ")  and  desired  to  procure  by  peaceful  means  a 
modification  of  the  laws. 

2.  Mr.  Cecil  Rhodes.  Premier  of  the  British  Cape 
Colony,   millionaire,  creator  and   managing  director 
of  the  territorially  immense  arid  financially  unproduc 
tive    South    African    Company;     projector    of   vast 
schemes  for  the  unification  and   consolidation  of  all 
the  South  African    states    into  one  imposing  com 
monwealth  or  empire  under  the  shadow  and  general 
protection  of   the  British   flag,   thought  he  saw  an 


w 


356  Following  the  Equator 

opportunity  to  make  profitable  use  of  the  Uitlandef 
discontent  above  mentioned  —  make  the  Johannes 
burg  cat  help  pull  out  one  of  his  consolidation  chest 
nuts  for  him.  With  this  view  he  set  himself  the  task 
of  warming  the  lawful  and  legitimate  petitions  and 
supplications  of  the  Uitlanders  into  seditious  talk, 
and  their  frettings  into  threatenings  —  the  final  out 
come  to  be  revolt  and  armed  rebellion.  If  he  could 
bring  about  a  bloody  collision  between  those  people 
and  the  Boer  government,  Great  Britain  would  have 
to  interfere ;  her  interference  would  be  resisted  by 
the  Boers ;  she  would  chastise  them  and  add  the 
Transvaal  to  her  South  African  possessions.  It  was 
not  a  foolish  idea,  but  a  rational  and  practical  one. 
After  a  couple  of  years  of  judicious  plotting,  Mr. 
Rhodes  had  his  reward  ;  the  revolutionary  kettle  was 
briskly  boiling  in  Johannesburg,  and  the  Uitlander 
leaders  were  backing  their  appeals  to  the  government 
—  now  hardened  into  demands  —  by  threats  of  force 
and  bloodshed.  By  the  middle  of  December,  1895, 
the  explosion  seemed  imminent.  Mr.  Rhodes  was 
diligently  helping,  from  his  distant  post  in  Cape 
Town.  He  was  helping  to  procure  arms  for  Johan 
nesburg;  he  was  also  arranging  to  have  Jameson 
break  over  the  border  and  come  to  Johannesburg 
with  600  mounted  men  at  his  back.  Jameson  —  as 
per  instructions  from  Rhodes,  perhaps  —  wanted  a 
letter  from  the  Reformers  requesting  him  to  come  to 
their  aid.  It  was  a  good  idea.  It  would  throw  a 
considerable  share  of  the  responsibility  of  his  in- 


Following  the  Equator  357 

vasion  upon  the  Reformers.  He  got  the  letter  — 
that  famous  one  urging  him  to  fly  to  the  rescue  of 
the  women  and  children.  He  got  it  two  months  be 
fore  he  flew.  The  Reformers  seem  to  have  thought 
it  over  and  concluded  that  they  had  not  done  wisely ; 
for  the  next  day  after  giving  Jameson  the  implicating 
document  they  wanted  to  withdraw  it  and  leave  the 
women  and  children  in  danger ;  but  they  were  told 
that  it  was  too  late.  The  original  had  gone  to  Mr. 
Rhodes  at  the  Cape.  Jameson  had  kept  a  copy, 
though. 

From  that  time  until  the  2Qth  of  December,  a  good 
deal  of  the  Reformers'  time  was  taken  up  with  en 
ergetic  efforts  to  keep  Jameson  from  coming  to  their 
assistance.  Jameson's  invasion  had  been  set  for  the 
26th.  The  Reformers  were  not  ready.  The  town 
was  not  united.  Some  wanted  a  fight,  some  wanted 
peace ;  some  wanted  a  new  government,  some  wanted 
the  existing  one  reformed ;  apparently  very  few 
wanted  the  revolution  to  take  place  in  the  interest 
and  under  the  ultimate  shelter  of  the  Imperial  flag 
—  British;  yet  a  report  began  to  spread  that  Mr. 
Rhodes's  embarrassing  assistance  had  for  its  end  this 
latter  object. 

Jameson  was  away  on  the  frontier  tugging  at  his 
leash,  fretting  to  burst  over  the  border.  By  hard 
work  the  Reformers  got  his  starting-date  postponed 
a  little,  and  wanted  to  get  it  postponed  eleven  days. 
Apparently,  Rhodes's  agents  were  seconding  their 
efforts  —  in  fact  wearing  out  the  telegraph  wires  try- 


358  Following  the  Equator 

ing  to  hold  him  back.  Rhodes  was  himself  the  only 
man  who  could  have  effectively  postponed  Jameson, 
but  that  would  have  been  a  disadvantage  to  his 
scheme;  indeed,  it  could  spoil  his  whole  two  years' 
work. 

Jameson  endured  postponement  three  days,  then 
resolved  to  wait  no  longer.  Without  any  orders  — 
excepting  Mr.  Rhodes's  significant  silence  —  he  cut 
the  telegraph  wires  on  the  29th,  and  made  his  plunge 
that  night,  to  go  to  the  rescue  of  the  women  and 
children,  by  urgent  request  of  a  letter  now  nine  days 
old  —  as  per  date, —  a  couple  of  months  old,  in  fact. 
He  read  the  letter  to  his  men,  and  it  affected  them. 
It  did  not  affect  all  of  them  alike.  Some  saw  in  it  a 
piece  of  piracy  of  doubtful  wisdom,  and  were  sorry 
to  find  that  they  had  been  assembled  to  violate 
friendly  territory  instead  of  to  raid  native  kraals,  as 
they  had  supposed. 

Jameson  would  have  to  ride  150  miles.  He  knew 
that  there  were  suspicions  abroad  in  the  Transvaal 
concerning  him,  but  he  expected  to  get  through  to 
Johannesburg  before  they  should  become  general 
and  obstructive.  But  a  telegraph  wire  had  been 
overlooked  and  not  cut.  It  spread  the  news  of  his 
invasion  far  and  wide,  and  a  few  hours  after  his  start 
the  Boer  farmers  were  riding  hard  from  every  direc 
tion  to  intercept  him. 

As  soon  as  it  was  known  in  Johannesburg  that  he 
was  on  his  way  to  rescue  the  women  and  children, 
the  grateful  people  put  the  women  and  children  in 


Following  the  Equator  359 

a  train  and  rushed  them  for  Australia.  In  fact,  the 
approach  of  Johannesburg's  saviour  created  panic 
and  consternation  there,  and  a  multitude  of  males  of 
peaceable  disposition  swept  to  the  trains  like  a  sand 
storm.  The  early  ones  fared  best;  they  secured 
seats  —  by  sitting  in  them  —  eight  hours  before  the 
first  train  was  timed  to  leave. 

Mr.  Rhodes  lost  no  time.  He  cabled  the  re 
nowned  Johannesburg  letter  of  invitation  to  the 
London  press  —  the  gray-headedest  piece  of  ancient 
history  that  ever  went  over  a  cable. 

The  new  poet  laureate  lost  no  time.  He  came 
out  with  a  rousing  poem  lauding  Jameson's  prompt 
and  splendid  heroism  in  flying  to  the  rescue  of  the 
women  and  children ;  for  the  poet  could  not  know 
that  he  did  not  fly  until  two  months  after  the  invita 
tion.  He  was  deceived  by  the  false  date  of  the 
letter,  which  was  December  2Oth. 

Jameson  was  intercepted  by  the  Boers  on  New 
Year's  Day,  and  on  the  next  day  he  surrendered. 
He  had  carried  his  copy  of  the  letter  along,  and  if 
his  instructions  required  him  —  in  case  of  emergency 
—  to  see  that  it  fell  into  the  hands  of  the  Boers,  he 
loyally  carried  them  out.  Mrs.  Hammond  gives 
him  a  sharp  rap  for  his  supposed  carelessness,  and 
emphasizes  her  feeling  about  it  with  burning  italics : 
11  It  was  picked  up  on  the  battle-field  in  a  leathern 
pouch,  supposed  to  be  Dr.  Jameson's  saddle-bag. 
Why,  in  the  name  of  all  that  is  discreet  and  honor  able  > 
didn't  ke  eat  tit" 


360  Following  the  Equator 

She  requires  too  much.  He  was  not  in  the  ser 
vice  of  the  Reformers  —  excepting  ostensibly;  he 
was  in  the  service  of  Mr.  Rhodes.  It  was  the  only 
plain  English  document,  undarkened  by  ciphers  and 
mysteries,  and  responsibly  signed  and  authenticated, 
which  squarely  implicated  the  Reformers  in  the  raid, 
and  it  was  not  to  Mr.  Rhodes 's  interest  that  it  should 
be  eaten.  Besides,  that  letter  was  not  the  original, 
it  was  only  a  copy.  Mr.  Rhodes  had  the  original  — 
and  didn't  eat  it.  He  cabled  it  to  the  London  press. 
It  had  already  been  read  in  England  and  America 
and  all  over  Europe  before  Jameson  dropped  it  on 
the  battlefield.  If  the  subordinate's  knuckles  de 
served  a  rap,  the  principal's  deserved  as  many  as  a 
couple  of  them. 

That  letter  is  a  juicily  dramatic  incident  and  is  en 
titled  to  all  its  celebrity,  because  of  the  odd  and 
variegated  effects  which  it  produced.  All  within  the 
space  of  a  single  week  it  had  made  Jameson  an  illus- 
trous  hero  in  England,  a  pirate  in  Pretoria,  and  an 
ass  without  discretion  or  honor  in  Johannesburg; 
also  it  had  produced  a  poet-laureatic  explosion  of 
colored  fireworks  which  filled  the  world's  sky  with 
giddy  splendors,  and  the  knowledge  that  Jameson 
was  coming  with  it  to  rescue  the  women  and  children 
emptied  Johannesburg  of  that  detail  of  the  popula 
tion.  For  an  old  letter,  this  was  much.  For  a 
letter  two  months  old,  it  did  marvels;  if  it  had  been 
a  year  old  it  would  have  done  miracles. 


CHAPTER  XXXI. 

First  catch  your  Boer,  then  kick  him. 

— PudiVnhead  Wilson? s  New  Calendar. 

THOSE  latter  days  were  days  of  bitter  worry  and 
trouble  for  the  harassed  Reformers. 

From  Mrs.  Hammond  we  learn  that  on  the  3ist 
(the  day  after  Johannesburg  heard  of  the  invasion) , 
"the  Reform  Committee  repudiates  Dr.  Jameson's 
inroad." 

It  also  publishes  its  intention  to  adhere  to  the 
Manifesto. 

It  also  earnestly  desires  that  the  inhabitants  shall 
refrain  from  overt  acts  against  the  Boer  government. 

It  also  "distributes  arms"  at  the  Court  House, 
and  furnishes  horses  "  to  the  newly-enrolled  volun 
teers." 

It  also  brings  a  Transvaal  flag  into  the  committee- 
room,  and  the  entire  body  swear  allegiance  to  it 
"  with  uncovered  heads  and  upraised  arms." 

Also  "  one  thousand  Lee-Metford  rifles  have  been 
given  out" — to  rebels. 

Also,  in  a  speech,  Reformer  Lionel  Phillips  in 
forms  the  public  that  the  Reform  Committee  Dele 
gation  has  "been  received  with  courtesy  by  the 

(361) 


362  Following  the  Equator 

Government  Commission,"  and  "been  assured  that 
their  proposals  shall  be  earnestly  considered." 
That  "while  the  Reform  Committee  regretted 
Jameson's  precipitate  action,  they  would  stand  by 
him." 

Also  the  populace  are  in  a  state  of  "  wild  enthu 
siasm,"  and  "  can  scarcely  be  restrained;  they  want 
to  go  out  to  meet  Jameson  and  bring  him  in  with 
triumphal  outcry." 

Also  the  British  High  Commissioner  has  issued  a 
damnifying  proclamation  against  Jameson  and  all 
British  abettors  of  his  game.  It  arrives  January  1st. 

It  is  a  difficult .  position  for  the  Reformers,  and 
full  of  hindrances  and  perplexities.  Their  duty  is 
hard,  but  plain: 

1.  They  have  to  repudiate  the  inroad,  and  stand 
by  the  inroader. 

2.  They   have   to    swear   allegiance   to   the  Boer 
government,  and    distribute   cavalry   horses   to    the 
rebels. 

3.  They  have  to  forbid  overt  acts  against  the  Boer 
government,  and  distribute  arms  to  its  enemies. 

4.  They  have  to  avoid  collision  with  the  British 
government,  but  still  stand  by  Jameson  and  their  new 
oath  of  allegiance  to   the  Boer  government,  taken, 
uncovered,  in  presence  of  its  flag. 

They  did  such  of  these  things  as  they  could ;  they 
tried  to  do  them  all ;  in  fact,  did  do  them  all,  but 
only  in  turn,  not  simultaneously.  In  the  nature  of 
things  they  could  not  be  made  to  simultane. 


Following  the  Equator  363 

In  preparing  for  armed  revolution  and  in  talking 
revolution,  were  the  Reformers  "  bluffing,"  or  were 
they  in  earnest?  If  they  were  in  earnest,  they  were 
taking  great  risks  —  as  has  been  already  pointed 
out.  A  gentleman  of  high  position  told  me  in 
Johannesburg  that  he  had  in  his  possession  a  printed 
document  proclaiming  a  new  government  and  naming 
its  president — one  of  the  Reform  leaders.  He  said 
that  this  proclamation  had  been  ready  for  issue,  but 
was  suppressed  when  the  raid  collapsed.  Perhaps  I 
misunderstood  him.  Indeed,  I  must  have  misunder-. 
stood  him,  for  I  have  not  seen  mention  of  this  large 
incident  in  print  anywhere. 

Besides,  I  hope  I  am  mistaken ;  for,  if  I  am,  then 
there  is  argument  that  the  Reformers  were  privately 
not  serious,  but  were  only  trying  to  scare  the  Boer 
government  into  granting  the  desired  reforms. 

The  Boer  government  was  scared,  and  it  had  a 
right  to  be.  For  if  Mr.  Rhodes'  plan  was  to  pro 
voke  a  collision  that  would  compel  the  interference 
of  England,  that  was  a  serious  matter.  If  it  could 
be  shown  that  that  was  also  the  Reformers'  plan 
and  purpose,  it  would  prove  that  they  had  marked 
out  a  feasible  project,  at  any  rate,  although  it  was 
one  which  could  hardly  fail  to  cost  them  ruinously 
before  England  should  arrive.  But  it  seems  clear 
that  they  had  no  such  plan  nor  desire.  If,  when 
the  worst  should  come  to  the  worst,  they  meant  to 
overthrow  the  Government,  they  also  meant  to  in 
herit  the  assets  themselves,  no  doubt. 


364  Following  the  Equator 

This  scheme  could  hardly  have  succeeded.  With 
an  army  of  Boers  at  their  gates  and  50,000  riotous 
blacks  in  their  midst,  the  odds  against  success  would 
have  been  too  heavy  —  even  if  the  whole  town  had 
been  armed.  With  only  2,500  rifles  in  the  place, 
they  stood  really  no  chance. 

To  me,  the  military  problems  of  the  situation  are 
of  more  interest  than  the  political  ones,  because  by 
disposition  I  have  always  been  especially  fond  of 
war.  No,  I  mean  fond  of  discussing  war;  and  fond 
of  giving  military  advice.  If  I  had  been  with 
Jameson  the  morning  after  he  started,  I  should  have 
advised  him  to  turn  back.  That  was  Monday;  it 
was  then  that  he  received  his  first  warning  from  a 
Boer  source  not  to  violate  the  friendly  soil  of  the 
Transvaal.  It  showed  that  his  invasion  was  known. 
If  I  had  been  with  him  on  Tuesday  morning  and 
afternoon,  when  he  received  further  warnings,  I 
should  have  repeated  my  advice.  If  I  had  been 
with  him  the  next  morning  —  New  Year's  —  when 
he  received  notice  that  *' a  few  hundred"  Boers 
were  waiting  for  him  a  few  miles  ahead,  I  should 
not  have  advised,  but  commanded  him  to  go  back. 
And  if  I  had  been  with  him  two  or  three  hours 
later  —  a  thing  not  conceivable  to  me  —  I  should  have 
retired  him  by  force ;  for  at  that  time  he  learned  that 
the  few  hundred  had  now  grown  to  800 ;  and 
that  meant  that  the  growing  would  go  on  growing. 

For,  by  authority  of  Mr.  Garrett,  one  knows  that 
Jameson's  600  were  only  530  at  most,  when  you 


Following  the  Equator  365 

count  out  his  native  drivers,  etc. ;  and  that  the  530 
consisted  largely  of  "  green  "  youths,  "  raw  young 
fellows,"  not  trained  and  war-worn  British  soldiers; 
and  I  would  have  told  Jameson  that  those  lads  would 
not  be  able  to  shoot  effectively  from  horseback  in 
the  scamper  and  racket  of  battle,  and  that  there 
would  not  be  anything  for  them  to  shoot  at,  anyway, 
but  rocks ;  for  the  Boers  would  be  behind  the  rocks, 
not  out  in  the  open.  I  would  have  told  him  that  300 
Boer  sharpshooters  behind  rocks  would  be  an  over 
match  for  his  500  raw  young  fellows  on  horseback. 

If  pluck  were  the  only  thing  essential  to  battle- 
winning,  the  English  would  lose  no  battles.  But 
discretion,  as  well  as  pluck,  is  required  when  one 
fights  Boers  and  Red  Indians.  In  South  Africa  the 
Briton  has  always  insisted  upon  standing  bravely 
up,  unsheltered,  before  the  hidden  Boer,  and  taking 
the  results.  Jameson's  men  would  follow  the  cus 
tom.  Jameson  would  not  have  listened  to  me  —  he 
would  have  been  intent  upon  repeating  history,  ac 
cording  to  precedent.  Americans  are  not  acquainted 
with  the  British-Boer  war  of  1881  ;  but  its  history  is 
interesting,  and  could  have  been  instructive  to 
Jameson  if  he  had  been  receptive.  I  will  cull  some 
details  of  it  from  trustworthy  sources  —  mainly 
from  **  Russell's  Natal."  Mr.  Russell  is  not  a 
Boer,  but  a  Briton.  He  is  inspector  of  schools, 
and  his  history  is  a  text-book  whose  purpose  is  the 
instruction  of  the  Natal  English  youth. 

After  the  seizure  of  the  Transvaal  and  the  sup- 

24** 


366  Following  the  Equator 

\x 

pression  of  the  Boer  government  by  England  in 
1877,  the  Boers  fretted  for  three  years,  and  made 
several  appeals  to  England  for  a  restoration  of  their 
liberties,  but  without  result.  Then  they  gathered 
themselves  together  in  a  great  mass-meeting  at 
Krugersdorp,  talked  their  troubles  over,  and  resolved 
to  fight  for  their  deliverance  from  the  British  yoke. 
(Krugersdorp  —  the  place  where  the  Boers  inter- 
rupted  the  Jameson  raid.)  The  little  handful  of 
farmers  rose  against  the  strongest  empire  in  the 
world.  They  proclaimed  martial  law  and  the  re-es 
tablishment  of  their  Republic,  They  organized  their 
forces  and  sent  them  forward  to  intercept  the  British 
battalions.  This,  although  Sir  Garnet  Wolseley  had 
but  lately  made  proclamation  that  "  so  long  as  the 
sun  shone  in  the  heavens,"  the  Transvaal  would  be 
and  remain  English  territory.  And  also  in  spite  of 
the  fact  that  the  commander  of  the  94th  regiment  — 
already  on  the  march  to  suppress  this  rebellion  — 
had  been  heard  to  say  that  "the  Boers  would  turn 
tail  at  the  first  beat  of  the  big  drum."  * 

Four  days  after  the  flag-raising,  the  Boer  force 
which  had  been  sent  forward  to  forbid  the  invasion 
of  the  English  troops  met  them  at  Bronkhorst  Spruit 
—  246  men  of  the  94th  regiment,  in  command  of  a 
colonel,  the  big  drum  beating,  the  band  playing  — 
and  the  first  battle  was  fought.  It  lasted  ten 
minutes.  Result: 


*  "  South  Africa  As  It  Is,"   by  F.   Reginald   Statham,   page  82. 
London:  T.  Fisher  Unwin,  1897. 


Following  the  Equator  367 

British  lossy  more  iJian  ijo  officers  and  men,  out 
of  the  24.6,  Surrender  of  the  remnant. 

Boer  loss  —  if  any  —  not  stated. 

They  are  fine  marksmen,  the  Boers.  From  the 
cradle  up,  they  live  on  horseback  and  hunt  wild 
animals  with  the  rifle.  They  have  a  passion  for 
liberty  and  the  Bible,  and  care  for  nothing  else. 

11  General  Sir  George  Colley,  Lieutenant-Governor 
and  Commander-in-Chief  in  Natal,  felt  it  his  duty  to 
proceed  at  once  to  the  relief  of  the  loyalists  and 
soldiers  beleaguered  in  the  different  towns  of  the 
Transvaal."  He  moved  out  with  1,000  men  and 
some  artillery.  He  found  the  Boers  encamped  in  a 
strong  and  sheltered  position  on  high  ground  at 
Laing's  Nek  —  every  Boer  behind  a  rock.  Early  in 
the  morning  of  the  28th  January,  1881,  he  moved 
to  the  attack  "with  the  5 8th  regiment,  commanded 
by  Colonel  Deane,  a  mounted  squadron  of  70  men, 
the  6cth  Rifles,  the  Naval  Brigade  with  three  rocket 
tubes,  and  the  Artillery  with  six  guns."  He  shelled 
the  Boers  for  twenty  minutes,  then  the  assault  was 
delivered,  the  58th  marching  up  the  slope  in  solid 
column.  The  battle  was  soon  finished,  with  this 
result,  according  to  Russell: 

British  loss  in  killed  and  wounded,  174. 

Boer  /oss,  "  trifling." 

Colonel  Deane  was  killed,  and  apparently  every 
officer  above  the  grade  of  lieutenant  was  killed  or 
wounded,  for  the  58th  retreated  to  its  camp  in  com- 
mand  of  a  lieutenant.  ("  Africa  as  It  Is.") 


368  Following  the  Equator 

That  ended  the  second  battle. 

On  the  /th  of  February  General  Colley  discovered 
that  the  Boers  were  flanking  his  position.  The  next 
morning  he  left  his  camp  at  Mount  Pleasant  and 
marched  out  and  crossed  the  Ingogo  river  with  270 
men,  started  up  the  Ingogo  heights,  and  there 
fought  a  battle  which  lasted  from  noon  till  nightfall. 
He  then  retreated,  leaving  his  wounded  with  his 
military  chaplain,  and  in  recrossing  the  now  swollen 
river  lost  some  of  his  men  by  drowning.  That  was 
the  third  Boer  victory.  Result,  according  to  Mr. 
Russell : 

British  loss  150  out  oj  270  engaged. 

Boer  loss,  8  killed,  9  wounded —  77. 

There  was  a  season  of  quiet,  now,  but  at  the  end 
of  about  three  weeks  Sir  George  Colley  conceived 
the  idea  of  climbing,  with  an  infantry  and  artillery 
force,  the  steep  and  rugged  mountain  of  Amajuba  in 
the  night  —  a  bitter  hard  task,  but  he  accomplished 
it.  On  the  way  he  left  about  200  men  to  guard  a 
strategic  point,  and  took  about  400  up  the  mountain 
with  him.  When  the  sun  rose  in  the  morning,  there 
was  an  unpleasant  surprise  for  the  Boers;  yonder 
were  the  English  troops  visible  on  top  of  the  moun 
tain  two  or  three  miles  away,  and  now  their  own 
position  was  at  the  mercy  of  the  English  artillery. 
The  Boer  chief  resolved  to  retreat  —  up  that  moun 
tain.  He  asked  for  volunteers,  and  got  them. 

The  storming  party  crossed  the  swale  and  began 
to  creep  up  the  steeps,  "and  from  behind  rocks 


Following  the  Equator  369 

and  bushes  they  shot  at  the  soldiers  on  the  sky-line 
as  if  they  were  stalking  deer,"  says  Mr.  Russell. 
There  was  "continuous  musketry  fire,  steady  and 
fatal  on  the  one  side,  wild  and  ineffectual  on  the 
other. "  The  Boers  reached  the  top,  and  began  to 
put  in  their  ruinous  work.  Presently  the  British 
"broke  and  fled  for  their  lives  down  the  rugged 
steep."  The  Boers  had  won  the  battle.  Result  in 
killed  and  wounded,  including  among  the  killed  the 
British  general : 

British  loss,  226,  out  of  400  engaged. 

Boer  loss,  I  killed,  jr  wounded. 

That  ended  the  war.  England  listened  to  reason, 
and  recognized  the  Boer  Republic  —  a  government 
which  has  never  been  in  any  really  awful  danger 
since,  until  Jameson  started  after  it  with  his  500 
"  raw  young  fellows."  To  recapitulate: 

The  Boer  farmers  and  British  soldiers  fought  4 
battles,  and  the  Boers  won  them  all.  Result  of  the 
4,  in  killed  and  wounded : 

British  loss,  700  men. 

Boer  loss,  so  far  as  known,  23  men. 

It  is  interesting,  now,  to  note  how  loyally  Jameson 
and  his  several  trained  British  military  officers  tried 
to  make  their  battles  conform  to  precedent.  Mr. 
Garrett's  account  of  the  Raid  is  much  the  best  one  I 
have  met  with,  and  my  impressions  of  the  Raid  are 
drawn  from  that. 

When  Jameson  learned  that  near  Krugersdorp  he 
would  find  800  Boers  waiting  to  dispute  his  passage, 
24  *» 


370  Following  the  Equator 

he  was  not  in  the  least  disturbed.  He  was  feeling 
as  he  had  felt  two  or  three  days  before,  when  he 
had  opened  his  campaign  with  a  historic  remark  to 
the  same  purport  as  the  one  with  which  the  com 
mander  of  the  94th  had  opened  the  Boer-British  war 
of  fourteen  years  before.  That  Commander's  re 
mark  was,  that  the  Boers* 'would  turn  tail  at  the 
first  beat  of  the  big  drum."  Jameson's  was,  that 
with  his  "  raw  young  fellows"  he  could  kick  the 
(persons)  of  the  Boers  "all  round  the  Transvaal." 
He  was  keeping  close  to  historic  precedent. 

Jameson  arrived  in  the  presence  of  the  Boers. 
They  —  according  to  precedent  —  were  not  visible. 
It  was  a  country  of  ridges,  depressions,  rocks, 
ditches,  moraines  of  mining-tailings  —  not  even  as 
favorable  for  cavalry  work  as  Laing's  Nek  had  been 
in  the  former  disastrous  days.  Jameson  shot  at  the 
ridges  and  rocks  with  his  artillery,  just  as  General 
Colley  had  done  at  the  Nek;  and  did  them  no 
damage  and  persuaded  no  Boer  to  show  himself. 
Then  about  a  hundred  of  his  men  formed  up  to 
charge  the  ridge  —  according  to  the  58th's  precedent 
at  the  Nek ;  but  as  they  dashed  forward  they  opened 
out  in  a  long  line,  which  was  a  considerable  im 
provement  on  the  58th's  tactics;  when  they  had 
gotten  to  within  200  yards  of  the  ridge  the  concealed 
Boers  opened  out  on  them  and  emptied  20  saddles. 
The  unwounded  dismounted  and  fired  at  the  rocks 
over  the  backs  of  their  horses ;  but  the  return-fire 
was  too  hot,  and  they  mounted  again,  "and  gal- 


Following  the  Equator  371 

loped  back  or  crawled  away  into  a  clump  of  reeds 
for  cover,  where  they  were  shortly  afterward  taken 
prisoners  as  they  lay  among  the  reeds.  Some  thirty 
prisoners  were  so  taken,  and  during  the  night  which 
followed  the  Boers  carried  away  another  thirty  killed 
and  wounded  —  the  wounded  to  Krugersdorp 
hospital."  Sixty  per  cent,  of  the  assaulting  force 
disposed  of — according  to  Mr.  Garrett's  estimate. 

It  was  according  to  Amajuba  precedent,  where 
the  British  loss  was  226  out  of  about  400  engaged. 

Also,  in  Jameson's  camp,  that  night,  "there  lay 
about  30  wounded  or  otherwise  disabled"  men. 
Also  during  the  night  "  some  30  or  40  young  fel 
lows  got  separated  from  the  command  and  straggled 
through  into  Johannesburg."  Altogether  a  possible 
150  men  gone,  out  of  his  530.  His  lads  had  fought 
valorously,  but  had  not  been  able  to  get  near  enough 
to  a  Boer  to  kick  him  around  the  Transvaal. 

At  dawn  the  next  morning  the  column  of  some 
thing  short  of  400  whites  resumed  its  march. 
Jameson's  grit  was  stubbornly  good;  indeed,  it  was 
always  that.  He  still  had  hopes.  There  was  a 
long  and  tedious  zigzagging  march  through  broken 
ground,  with  constant  harassment  from  the  Boers; 
and  at  last  the  column  "  walked  into  a  sort  of  trap," 
and  the  Boers  "  closed  in  upon  it."  "Men  and 
horses  dropped  on  all  sides.  In  the  column  the 
feeling  grew  that  unless  it  could  burst  through  the 
Boer  lines  at  this  point  it  was  done  for.  The 
Maxims  were  fired  until  they  grew  tco  hot,  and, 


372  Following  the  Equator 

water  failing  for  the  cool  jacket,  five  of  them  jammed 
and  went  out  of  action.  The  /-pounder  was  fired 
until  only  half  an  hour's  ammunition  was  left  to 
fire  with.  One  last  rush  was  made,  and  failed,  and 
then  the  Staats  Artillery  came  up  on  the  left  flank, 
and  the  game  was  up." 

Jameson  hoisted  a  white  flag  and  surrendered. 

There  is  a  story,  which  may  not  be  true,  about  an 
ignorant  Boer  farmer  there  who  thought  that  this 
white  flag  was  the  national  flag  of  England.  He 
had  been  at  Bronkhorst,  and  Laing's  Nek,  and 
Ingogo  and  Amajuba,  and  supposed  that  the  Eng 
lish  did  not  run  up  their  flag  excepting  at  the  end  of 
a  fight. 

The  following  is  (as  I  understand  it)  Mr.  Gar- 
rett's  estimate  of  Jameson's  total  loss  in  killed  and 
wounded  for  the  two  days : 

"When  they  gave  in  they  were  minus  some  20 
per  cent,  of  combatants.  There  were  76  casualties. 
There  were  30  men  hurt  or  sick  in  the  wagons. 
There  were  27  killed  on  the  spot  or  mortally 
wounded."  Total,  133,  cut  of  the  original  530. 
It  is  just  25  per  cent.*  This  is  a  large  improve 
ment  upon  the  precedents  established  at  Bronkhorst, 
Laing's  Nek,  Ingogo,  and  Amajuba,  and  seems  to 

*  However,  I  judge  that  the  total  was  really  150;  for  the  number  of 
wounded  carried  to  Krugersdorp  hospital  was  53;  not  30.  as  Mr. 
Garrett  reports  it.  The  lady  whose  guest  I  was  in  Krugersdorp  gave  me 
the  figures.  She  was  head  nurse  from  the  beginning  of  hostilities 
(Jan.  i)  until  the  professional  nurses  arrived,  Jan.  8.  Of  the  53, 
"  Three  or  four  were  Boers; "  I  quote  her  words. 


Following  the  Equator  373 

indicate  that  Boer  marksmanship  is  not  so  good  now 
as  it  was  in  those  days.  But  there  is  one  detail  in 
which  the  Raid  episode  exactly  repeats  history. 
By  surrender  at  Bronkhorst,  the  whole  British  force 
disappeared  from  the  theater  of  war;  this  was  the 
case  with  Jameson's  force. 

In  the  Boer  loss,  also,  historical  precedent  is  fol 
lowed  with  sufficient  fidelity.  In  the  4  battles  named 
above,  the  Boer  loss,  so  far  as  known,  was  an 
average  of  6  men  per  battle,  to  the  British  average 
loss  of  175.  In  Jameson's  battles,  as  per  Boer 
official  report,  the  Boer  loss  in  killed  was  4.  Two 
of  these  were  killed  by  the  Boers  themselves,  by 
accident,  the  other  by  Jameson's  army  —  one  of 
them  intentionally,  the  other  by  a  pathetic  mis 
chance.  *'  A  young  Boer  named  Jacobz  was  moving 
forward  to  give  a  drink  to  one  of  the  wounded 
troopers  (Jameson's)  after  the  first  charge,  when 
another  wounded  man,  mistaking  his  intention,  shot 
him."  There  were  three  or  four  wounded  Boers  in 
the  Krugersdorp  hospital,  and  apparently  no  others 
have  been  reported.  Mr.  Garrett,  "  on  a  balance  of 
probabilities,  fully  accepts  the  official  version,  and 
thanks  Heaven  the  killed  was  not  larger." 

As  a  military  man,  I  wish  to  point  out  what  seems 
to  me  to  be  military  errors  in  the  conduct  of  the 
campaign  which  we  have  just  been  considering,  I 
have  seen  active  service  in  the  field,  and  it  was  in 
the  actualities  of  war  that  I  acquired  my  training 
and  my  right  to  speak.  I  served  two  weeks  in  the 


r 

374  Following  the  Equator 

beginning  of  our  Civil  War,  and  during  all  that  time 
commanded  a  battery  of  infantry  composed  of 
twelve  men.  General  Grant  knew  the  history  of 
my  campaign,  for  I  told  it  him.  I  also  told  him 
the  principle  upon  which  I  had  conducted  it;  which 
was,  to  tire  the  enemy.  I  tired  out  and  disqualified 
many  battalions,  yet  never  had  a  casualty  myself 
nor  lost  a  man.  General  Grant  was  not  given  to 
paying  compliments,  yet  he  said  frankly  that  if  I 
had  conducted  the  whole  war  much  bloodshed  would 
have  been  spared,  and  that  what  the  army  might 
have  lost  through  the  inspiriting  results  of  collision 
in  the  field  would  have  been  amply  made  up  by  the 
liberalizing  influences  of  travel.  Further  endorse 
ment  does  not  seem  to  me  to  be  necessary. 

Let  us  now  examine  history,  and  see  what  it 
teaches.  In  the  4  battles  fought  in  1881  and  the 
two  fought  by  Jameson,  the  British  loss  in  killed, 
wounded,  and  prisoners,  was  substantially  1,300 
men;  the  Boer  loss,  as  far  as  is  ascertainable,  was 
about  30  men.  These  figures  show  that  there  was 
a  defect  somewhere.  It  was  not  in  the  absence  of 
courage.  I  think  it  lay  in  the  absence  of  discretion. 
The  Briton  should  have  done  one  thing  or  the 
other:  discarded  British  methods  and  fought  the 
Boer  with  Boer  methods,  or  augmented  his  own 
force  until  —  using  British  methods  —  it  should  be 
large  enough  to  equalize  results  with  the  Boer. 

To  retain  the  British  method  requires  certain 
things  determinable  by  arithmetic.  If,  for  argu- 


Following  the  Equator  375 

ment's  sake,  we  allow  that  the  aggregate  of  1,716 
British  soldiers  engaged  in  the  4  early  battles  was 
opposed  by  the  same  aggregate  of  Boers,  we  have 
this  result :  the  British  loss  of  700  and  the  Boer  loss 
of  23  argues  that  in  order  to  equalize  results  in 
future  battles  you  must  make  the  British  force  thirty 
times  as  strong  as  the  Boer  force.  Mr.  Garrett 
shows  that  the  Boer  force  immediately  opposed  to 
Jameson  was  2,000,  and  that  there  were  6,000  more 
on  hand  by  the  evening  of  the  second  day.  Arith 
metic  shows  that  in  order  to  make  himself  the  equal 
of  the  8,000  Boers,  Jameson  should  have  had 
240,000  men,  whereas  he  merely  had  530  boys. 
From  a  military  point  of  view,  backed  by  the  facts 
of  history,  I  conceive  that  Jameson's  military  judg 
ment  was  at  fault. 

Another  thing.  Jameson  was  encumbered  by 
artillery,  ammunition,  and  rifles.  The  facts  of  the 
battle  show  that  he  should  have  had  none  of  those 
things  along.  They  were  heavy,  they  were  in  his 
way,  they  impeded  his  march.  There  was  nothing 
to  shoot  at  but  rocks  —  he  knew  quite  well  that 
there  would  be  nothing  to  shoot  at  but  rocks  —  and 
he  knew  that  artillery  and  rifles  have  no  effect  upon 
rocks.  He  was  badly  overloaded  with  unessentials. 
He  had  8  Maxims  —  a  Maxim  is  a  kind  of  Catling, 
I  believe,  and  shoots  about  500  bullets  per  minute; 
he  had  one  1 2  ^-pounder  cannon  and  two  7- 
pounders;  also,  145,000  rounds  of  ammunition. 
He  worked  the  Maxims  so  hard  upon  the  rooks  that 


3/6  Following  the  Equator 

five  of  them  became  disabled  —  five  of  the  Maxims, 
not  the  rocks.  It  is  believed  that  upwards  of  100,000 
rounds  of  ammunition  of  the  various  kinds  were  fired 
during  the  2 1  hours  that  the  battle  lasted.  One  man 
killed.  He  must  have  been  much  mutilated.  It 
was  a  pity  to  bring  those  futile  Maxims  along. 
Jameson  should  have  furnished  himself  with  a  battery 
of  Pudd'nhead  Wilson  maxims  instead.  They  are 
much  more  deadly  than  those  others,  and  they  are 
easily  carried,  because  they  have  no  weight. 

Mr.  Garrett  —  not  very  carefully  concealing  a 
smile  —  excuses  the  presence  of  the  Maxims  by  say 
ing  that  they  were  of  very  substantial  use  because 
their  sputtering  disordered  the  aim  of  the  Boers, 
and  in  that  way  saved  lives. 

Three  cannon,  eight  Maxims,  and  five  hundred 
rifles  yielded  a  result  which  emphasized  a  fact  which 
had  already  been  established  —  that  the  British 
system  of  standing  out  in  the  open  to  fight  Boers 
who  are  behind  rocks  is  not  wise,  not  excusable, 
and  ought  to  be  abandoned  for  something  more 
efficacious.  For  the  purpose  of  war  is  to  kill,  not 
merely  to  waste  ammunition. 

If  I  could  get  the  management  of  one  of  those 
campaigns,  I  would  know  what  to  do,  for  I  have 
studied  the  Boer.  He  values  the  Bible  above  every 
other  thing.  The  most  delicious  edible  in  South 
Africa  is  "  biltong."  You  will  have  seen  it  men 
tioned  in  Olive  Schreiner's  books.  It  is  wrhat  ouf 
plainsmen  call  **  jerked  beef."  It  is  the  Boer's 


Following  the  Equator  377 

main  standby.     He  has  a  passion  for  it,  and  he  is 
right. 

If  I  had  the  command  of  the  campaign  I  would 
go  with  rifles  only,  no  cumbersome  Maxims  and 
cannon  to  spoil  good  rocks  with.  I  would  move 
surreptitiously  by  night  to  a  point  about  a  quarter 
of  a  mile  from  the  Boer  camp,  and  there  I  would 
build  up  a  pyramid  of  biltong  and  Bibles  fifty  feet 
high,  and  then  conceal  my  men  all  about.  In  the 
morning  the  Boers  would  send  out  spies,  and  then 
the  rest  would  come  with  a  rush.  I  would  surround 
them,  and  they  would  have  to  fight  my  men  on 
equal  terms,  in  the  open.  There  wouldn't  be  any 
Amajuba  results.* 


*  Just  as  I  am  finishing  this  book  an  unfortunate  dispute  has  sprung 
up  between  Dr.  Jameson  and  his  officers,  on  the  one  hand,  and  Colonel 
Rhodes  on  the  other,  concerning  the  wording  of  a  note  which  Colonel 
Rhodes  sent  from  Johannesburg  by  a  cyclist  to  Jameson  just  before  hos 
tilities  began  on  the  memorable  New  Year's  Day.  Some  of  the  frag 
ments  of  this  note  were  found  on  the  battlefield  after  the  fight,  and 
these  have  been  pieced  together;  the  dispute  is  as  to  what  words  the 
lacking  fragments  contained.  Jameson  says  the  note  promised  him  a  re» 
inforcement  of  300  men  from  Johannesburg.  Colonel  Rhodes  denies 
this,  and  says  he  merely  promised  to  send  out  "  some"  men  "  to  meet 
you." 

It  seems  a  pity  that  these  friends  should  fall  out  over  so  little  a  thing. 
If  the  300  had  been  sent,  what  good  would  it  have  done?  In  21  hours 
of  industrious  fighting,  Jameson's  530  men,  with  8  Maxims,  3  cannon, 
and  145,000  rounds  of  ammunition,  killed  an  aggregate  of  one  Boer. 
These  statistics  show  that  a  reinforcement  of  300  Johannesburgers, 
armed  merely  with  muskets,  would  have  killed,  at  the  outside,  only  a 
little  over  a  half  of  another  Boer.  This  would  not  have  saved  the  day. 
It  would  not  even  have  seriously  affected  the  general  result.  The 
figures  show  clearly,  and  with  mathematical  violence,  that  the  only  way 


378  Following  the  Equator 

to  save  Jameson,  or  even  give  him  a  fair  and  equal  chance  with  the 
enemy,  was  for  Johannesburg  to  send  him  240  Maxims,  90  cannon,  600 
carloads  of  ammunition,  and  240,000  men.  Johannesburg  was  not  in  a 
position  to  do  this.  Johannesburg  has  been  called  very  hard  names  for 
not  reinforcing  Jameson.  But  in  every  instance  this  has  been  done  by 
two  classes  of  persons  —  people  who  do  not  read  history,  and  people, 
like  Jameson,  who  do  not  understand  what  it  means  after  they  have 
read  it. 


CHAPTER   XXXII. 

None  of  us  can  have  as  many  virtues  as  the  fountain-pen,  or  half  its  cussed* 
ness ;  but  we  can  try. —  Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

THE  Duke  of  Fife  has  borne  testimony  that  Mr. 
Rhodes  deceived  him.  That  is  also  what  Mr. 
Rhodes  did  with  the  Reformers.  He  got  them  into 
trouble,  and  then  stayed  out  himself.  A  judicious 
man.  He  has  always  been  that.  As  to  this  there 
was  a  moment  of  doubt,  once.  It  was  when  he  was 
out  on  his  last  pirating  expedition  in  the  Matabele 
country.  The  cable  shouted  out  that  he  had  gone 
unarmed,  to  visit  a  party  of  hostile  chiefs.  It  was 
true,  too ;  and  this  daredevil  thing  came  near  fetch 
ing  another  indiscretion  out  of  the  poet  laureate.  It 
would  have  been  too  bad,  for  when  the  facts  were 
all  in,  it  turned  out  that  there  was  a  lady  along,  too, 
and  she  also  was  unarmed. 

In  the  opinion  of  many  people  Mr.  Rhodes  is 
South  Africa;  others  think  he  is  only  a  large  part  of 
it.  These  latter  consider  that  South  Africa  consists 
of  Table  Mountain,  the  diamond  mines,  the  Johannes 
burg  gold  fields,  and  Cecil  Rhodes.  The  gold  fields 
are  wonderful  in  every  way.  In  seven  or  eight 

(379) 


380  Following  the  Equator 

years  they  built  up,  in  a  desert,  a  city  of  a  hundred 
thousand  inhabitants,  counting  white  and  black 
together;  and  not  the  ordinary  mining  city  of 
wooden  shanties,  but  a  city  made  out  of  lasting 
material.  Nowhere  in  the  world  is  there  such  a 
concentration  of  rich  mines  as  at  Johannesburg. 
Mr  Bonamici,  my  manager  there,  gave  me  a  small 
gold  brick  with  some  statistics  engraved  upon  it 
which  record  the  output  of  gold  from  the  early  days 
to  July,  1895,  and  exhibit  the  strides  which  have 
been  made  in  the  development  of  the  industry:  in 
1888  the  output  was  $4,162,440;  the  output  of  the 
next  five  and  a  half  years  was  (total)  $17,585,894; 
for  the  single  year  ending  with  June,  1895,  it  was 
$45»553>700. 

The  capital  which  has  developed  the  mines  came 
from  England,  the  mining  engineers  from  America. 
This  is  the  case  with  the  diamond  mines  also. 
South  Africa  seems  to  be  the  heaven  of  the  Amer 
ican  scientific  mining  engineer.  He  gets  the  choicest 
places,  and  keeps  them.  His  salary  is  not  based 
upon  what  he  would  get  in  America,  but  apparently 
upon  what  a  whole  family  of  him  would  get  there. 

The  successful  mines  pay  great  dividends,  yet  the 
rock  is  not  rich,  from  a  Calif ornian  point  of  view. 
Rock  which  yields  ten  or  twelve  dollars  a  ton  is  con 
sidered  plenty  rich  enough.  It  is  troubled  with  base 
metals  to  such  a  degree  that  twenty  years  ago  it 
would  have  been  only  about  half  as  valuable  as  it  is 
now ;  for  at  that  time  there  was  no  paying  way  of 


Following  the  Equator  38! 

getting  anything  out  of  such  rock  but  the  coarser- 
grained  ' '  free  ' '  gold ;  but  the  new  cyanide  process 
has  changed  all  that,  and  the  gold  fields  of  the  world 
now  deliver  up  fifty  million  dollars'  worth  of  gold 
per  year  which  would  have  gone  into  the  tailing-pile 
under  the  former  conditions. 

The  cyanide  process  was  new  to  me,  and  full  of  in 
terest;  and  among  the  costly  and  elaborate  mining 
machinery  there  were  fine  things  which  were  new  to 
me,  but  I  was  already  familiar  with  the  rest  of  the 
details  of  the  gold-mining  industry.  I  had  been  a 
gold  miner  myself,  in  my  day,  and  knew  substantially 
everything  that  those  people  knew  about  it,  except 
how  to  make  money  at  it.  But  I  learned  a  good 
deal  about  the  Boers  there,  and  that  was  a  fresh  sub 
ject.  What  I  heard  there  was  afterwards  repeated  to 
me  in  other  parts  of  South  Africa.  Summed  up  — 
according  to  the  information  thus  gained  —  this  is 
the  Boer : 

He  is  deeply  religious,  profoundly  ignorant,  dull, 
obstinate,  bigoted,  uncleanly  in  his  habits,  hospi 
table,  honest  in  his  dealings  with  the  whites,  a  hard 
master  to  his  black  servant,  lazy,  a  good  shot,  good 
horseman,  addicted  to  the  chase,  a  lover  of  political 
independence,  a  good  husband  and  father,  not  fond 
of  herding  together  in  towns,  but  liking  the  seclusion 
and  remoteness  and  solitude  and  empty  vastness  and 
silence  of  the  veldt ;  a  man  of  a  mighty  appetite,  and 
not  delicate  about  what  he  appeases  it  with  —  well 
satisfied  with  pork  and  Indian  corn  and  biltong,  re- 


382  Following  the  Equator 

quiring  only  that  the  quantity  shall  not  be  stinted; 
willing  to  ride  a  long  journey  to  take  a  hand  in  a 
rude  all-night  dance  interspersed  with  vigorous  feed 
ing  and  boisterous  jollity,  but  ready  to  ride  twice  as 
far  for  a  prayer-meeting;  proud  of  his  Dutch  and 
Huguenot  origin  and  its  religious  and  military 
history;  proud  of  his  race's  achievements  in  South 
Africa,  its  bold  plunges  into  hostile  and  uncharted 
deserts  in  search  of  free  solitudes  unvexed  by  the 
pestering  and  detested  English,  also  its  victories  over 
the  natives  and  the  British ;  proudest  of  all,  of  the 
direct  and  effusive  personal  interest  which  the  Deity 
has  always  taken  in  its  affairs.  He  cannot  read,  he 
cannot  write ;  he  has  one  or  two  newspapers,  but  he 
is  apparently  not  aware  of  it ;  until  latterly  he  had  no 
schools,  and  taught  his  children  nothing;  news  is  a 
term  which  has  no  meaning  to  him,  and  the  thing 
itself  he  cares  nothing  about.  He  hates  to  be  taxed 
and  resents  it.  He  has  stood  stock  still  in  South 
Africa  for  two  centuries  and  a  half,  and  "would  like 
to  stand  still  till  the  end  of  time,  for  he  has  no 
sympathy  with  Uitlander  notions  of  progress.  He 
is  hungry  to  be  rich,  for  he  is  human;  but  his 
preference  has  been  for  riches  in  cattle,  not  in  fine 
clothes  and  fine  houses  and  gold  and  diamonds. 
The  gold  and  the  diamonds  have  brought  the  godless 
stranger  within  his  gates,  also  contamination  and 
broken  repose,  and  he  wishes  that  they  had  never 
been  discovered. 

I  think  that  the  bulk  of  those  details  can  be  found 


Followmg  the  Equator  38} 

in  Olive  Schreiner's  books,  and  she  would  not  be 
accused  of  sketching  the  Boer's  portrait  with  an 
unfair  hand. 

Now  what  would  you  expect  from  that  unpromis 
ing  material?  What  ought  you  to  expect  from  it? 
Laws  inimical  to  religious  liberty?  Yes.  Laws  de 
nying  representation  and  suffrage  to  the  intruder? 
Yes.  Laws  unfriendly  to  educational  institutions? 
Yes.  Laws  obstructive  of  gold  production?  Yes. 
Discouragement  of  railway  expansion?  Yes.  Laws 
heavily  taxing  the  intruder  and  overlooking  the  Boer? 
Yes. 

The  Uitlander  seems  to  have  expected  something 
very  different  from  all  that.  I  do  not  know  why. 
Nothing  different  from  it  was  rationally  to  be  ex 
pected.  A  round  man  cannot  be  expected  to  fit  a 
square  hole  right  away.  He  must  have  time  t( 
modify  his  shape.  The  modification  had  begun  in  a 
detail  or  two,  before  the  Raid,  and  was  making  some 
progress.  It  has  made  further  progress  since. 
There  are  wise  men  in  the  Boer  government,  and 
that  accounts  for  the  modification ;  the  modification 
of  the  Boer  mass  has  probably  not  begun  yet.  If 
the  heads  of  the  Boer  government  had  not  been  wise 
men  they  would  have  hanged  Jameson,  and  thus 
turned  a  very  commonplace  pirate  into  a  holy  martyr. 
But  even  their  wisdom  has  its  limits,  and  they  will 
hang  Mr.  Rhodes  if  they  ever  catch  him.  That  will 
round  him  and  complete  him  and  make  him  a  saint. 
He  has  already  been  called  by  all  other  titles  that 


384  Following  the  Equator 

symbolize  human  grandeur,  and  he  ought  to  rise  to 
this  one,  the  grandest  of  all.  It  will  be  a  dizzy  jump 
from  where  he  is  now,  but  that  is  nothing,  it  will  land 
him  in  good  company  and  be  a  pleasant  change  for 
him. 

Some  of  the  things  demanded  by  the  Johannes- 
burgers'  Manifesto  have  been  conceded  since  the 
days  of  the  Raid,  and  the  others  will  follow  in  time, 
no  doubt.  It  was  most  fortunate  for  the  miners  of 
Johannesburg  that  the  taxes  which  distressed  them  so 
much  were  levied  by  the  Boer  government,  instead  of 
by  their  friend  Rhodes  and  his  Chartered  Company  of 
highwaymen,  for  these  latter  take  half  of  whatever 
their  mining  victims  find,  they  do  not  stop  at  a  mere 
percentage.  If  the  Johannesburg  miners  were 
under  their  jurisdiction  they  would  be  in  the  poor- 
house  in  twelve  months. 

I  have  been  under  the  impression  all  along  that  I 
had  an  unpleasant  paragraph  about  the  Boers  some 
where  in  my  note-book,  and  also  a  pleasant  one.  I 
have  found  them  now.  The  unpleasant  one  is  dated 
at  an  interior  village,  and  says: 

"  Mr.  Z.  called.  He  is  an  English  Afrikander;  is  an  old  resident, 
and  has  a  Boer  wife.  He  speaks  the  language,  and  his  professional 
business  is  with  the  Boers  exclusively.  He  tc!i  me  that  the  ancient 
Boer  families  in  the  great  region  of  which  this  village  is  the  commercial 
center  are  falling  victims  to  their  inherited  indolence  and  dullness  in  the 
materialistic  latter-day  race  and  ciruggle,  and  are  dropping  one  by  one 
into  the  grip  of  the  usurer —  getting  hftpelessly  in  debt  —  and  are  losing 
their  high  place  and  retiring  to  second  and  lower.  The  Boer's  farm 
does  not  go  to  another  Boer  when  he  loses  it,  but  to  a  foreigner.  Some 
have  fallen  so  low  that  they  sell  their  daughters  to  the  blacks." 


Following  the  Equator  385 

Under  date  of  another  South  African  town  I  find 
the  note  which  is  creditable  to  the  Boers : 

"  Dr.  X.  told  me  that  in  the  Kafir  war  1,500  Kafirs  took  refuge  in  a 
great  cave  in  the  mountains  about  90  miles  north  of  Johannesburg,  and 
the  Boers  blocked  up  the  entrance  and  smoked  them  to  death.  Dr.  X. 
has  been  in  there  and  seen  the  great  array  of  bleached  skeletons  —  one 
a  woman  with  the  skeleton  of  a  child  hugged  to  her  breast." 

The  great  bulk  of  the  savages  must  go.  The 
white  man  wants  their  lands,  and  all  must  go  except 
ing  such  percentage  of  them  as  he  will  need  to  do 
his  work  for  him  upon  terms  to  be  determined  by 
himself.  Since  history  has  removed  the  element  of 
guesswork  from  this  matter  and  made  it  certainty, 
the  humanest  way  of  diminishing  the  black  population 
should  be  adopted,  not  the  old  cruel  ways  of  the 
past.  Mr.  Rhodes  and  his  gang  have  been  following 
the  old  ways.  They  are  chartered  to  rob  and  slay, 
and  they  lawfully  do  it,  but  not  in  a  compassionate 
and  Christian  spirit.  They  rob  the  Mashonas  and 
the  Matabeles  of  a  portion  of  their  territories  in  the 
hallowed  old  style  of  "purchase"  for  a  song,  and 
then  they  force  a  quarrel  and  take  the  rest  by  the 
strong  hand.  They  rob  the  natives  of  their  cattle 
under  the  pretext  that  all  the  cattle  in  the  country 
belonged  to  the  king  whcm  they  have  tricked  and 
assassinated.  They  issue  "regulations"  requiring 
the  incensed  and  harassed  natives  to  wcrk  for  the 
white  settlers,  and  neglect  their  own  affairs  to  do  it. 
This  is  slavery,  and  is  several  times  worse  than  was 
the  American  slavery  which  used  to  pain  England  so 

much ;  for  when  this  Rhodesian  slave  is  sick,  super- 
25** 


386  Following  the  Equator 

annuated,  or  otherwise  disabled,  he  must  support 
himself  or  starve  —  his  master  is  under  no  obligation 
to  support  him. 

The  reduction  of  the  population  by  Rhodesian 
methods  to  the  desired  limit  is  a  return  to  the  old- 
time  slow-misery  and  lingering-death  system  of  a 
discredited  time  and  a  crude  *  'civilization."  We 
humanely  reduce  an  overplus  of  dogs  by  swift 
chloroform  ;  the  Boer  humanely  reduced  an  overplus 
of  blacks  by  swift  suffocation;  the  nameless  but 
right-hearted  Australian  pioneer  humanely  reduced 
his  overplus  of  aboriginal  neighbors  by  a  sweetened 
swift  death  concealed  in  a  poisoned  pudding.  All 
these  are  admirable,  and  worthy  of  praise;  you  and 
I  would  rather  suffer  either  of  these  deatKs  thirty 
times  over  in  thirty  successive  days  than  linger  out 
one  ol  the  Rhodesian  twenty-year  deaths,  with  its 
daily  burden  of  insult,  humiliation,  and  forced  labor 
for  a  man  whose  entire  race  the  victim  hates. 
Rhodesia  is  a  happy  name  for  that  land  of  piracy 
and  pillage,  and  puts  the  right  stain  upon  it. 

Several  long  journeys  gave  us  experience  of  the 
Cape  Colony  railways;  easy-riding,  fine  cars;  all  the 
conveniences ;  thorough  cleanliness ;  comfortable 
beds  furnished  for  the  night  trains.  It  was  in  the 
first  days  of  June,  and  winter;  the  daytime  was 
pleasant,  the  night-time  nice  and  cold.  Spinning 
along  all  day  in  the  cars  it  was  ecstasy  to  breathe  the 
bracing  air  and  gaze  out  over  the  vast  brown  solitudes 
of  the  velvet  plains,  soft  and  lovely  near  by,  still 


Following  the  Equator  387 

softer  and  lovelier  further  away,  softest  and  loveliest 
of  all  in  the  remote  distances,  where  dim  island-hills 
seemed  afloat,  as  in  a  sea  —  a  sea  made  of  dream- 
stuff  and  flushed  with  colors  faint  and  rich ;  and  dear 
me,  the  depth  of  the  sky,  and  the  beauty  of  the 
strange  new  cloud-forms,  and  the  glory  of  the  sun 
shine,  the  lavishness,  the  wastefulness  of  it!  The 
vigor  and  freshness  and  inspiration  of  the  air  and  the 
sun  —  well,  it  was  all  just  as  Olive  Schreiner  had 
made  it  in  her  books. 

To  me  the  veldt,  in  its  sober  winter  garb,  was  sur 
passingly  beautiful.  There  were  unlevel  stretches 
where  it  was  rolling  and  swelling,  and  rising  and 
subsiding,  and  sweeping  superbly  on  and  on,  and 
still  on  and  on  like  an  ocean,  toward  the  far-away 
horizon,  its  pale  brown  deepening  by  delicately- 
graduated  shades  of  rich  orange,  and  finally  to  pur 
ple  and  crimson  where  it  washed  against  the  wooded 
hills  and  naked  red  crags  at  the  base  of  the  sky. 

Everywhere,  from  Cape  Town  to  Kimberley,  and 
from  Kimberley  to  Port  Elizabeth  and  East  London, 
the  towns  were  well  populated  with  tamed  blacks ; 
tamed  and  Christianized  too,  I  suppose,  for  they 
wore  the  dowdy  clothes  of  our  Christian  civilization. 
But  for  that,  many  of  them  would  have  been  re 
markably  handsome.  These  fiendish  clothes, 
together  with  the  proper  lounging  gait,  good- 
natured  face,  happy  air,  and  easy  laugh,  made  them 
precise  counterparts  of  our  American  blacks ;  often 
where  all  the  other  aspects  were  strikingly  and  har- 


388  Following  the  Equator 

moniously  and  thrillingly  African,  a  flock  of  these 
natives  would  intrude,  looking  wholly  out  of  place, 
and  spoil  it  all,  making  the  thing  a  grating  discord, 
half  African  and  half  American. 

One  Sunday  in  King  William's  Town  a  score  of 
colored  women  came  mincing  across  the  great  barren 
square  dressed  —  oh,  in  the  last  perfection  of  fashion, 
and  newness,  and  expensiveness,  and  showy  mixture 
of  unrelated  colors, —  all  just  as  I  had  seen  it  so 
often  at  home ;  and  in  their  faces  and  their  gait  was 
that  languishing,  aristocratic,  divine  delight  in  their 
finery  which  was  so  familiar  to  me,  and  had  always 
been  such  a  satisfaction  to  my  eye  and  my  heart.  I 
seemed  among  old,  old  friends ;  friends  of  fifty  years, 
and  I  stopped  and  cordially  greeted  them.  They 
broke  into  a  good-fellowship  laugh,  flashing  their 
white  teeth  upon  me,  and  all  answered  at  once.  I 
did  not  understand  a  word  they  said.  I  was  aston 
ished  ;  I  was  not  dreaming  that  they  would  answer 
in  anything  but  American. 

The  voices,  too,  of  the  African  women,  were 
familiar  to  me  —  sweet  and  musical,  just  like  those 
of  the  slave  women  of  my  early  days.  I  followed 
a  couple  of  them  all  over  the  Orange  Free  State  — 
no,  over  its  capital  —  Bloemfontein,  to  hear  their 
liquid  voices  and  the  happy  ripple  of  their  laughter. 
Their  language  was  a  large  improvement  upon 
American.  Also  upon  the  Zulu.  It  had  no  Zulu 
click  in  it;  and  it  seemed  to  have  no  angles  or 
corners,  no  roughness,  no  vile  s's  or  other  hissing 


Following  the  Equator  389 

sounds,  but  was  very,  very  mellow  and  rounded  and 
flowing. 

In  moving  about  the  country  in  the  trains,  I  had 
opportunity  to  see  a  good  many  Boers  of  the  veldt. 
One  day  at  a  village  station  a  hundred  of  them  got 
out  of  the  third-class  cars  to  feed.  Their  clothes 
were  very  interesting.  For  ugliness  of  shapes,  and 
for  miracles  of  ugly  colors  inharmoniously  associated, 
they  were  a  record. 

The  effect  was  nearly  as  exciting  and  interesting 
as  that  produced  by  the  brilliant  and  beautiful 
clothes  and  perfect  taste  always  on  view  at  the  Indian 
railway  stations.  One  man  had  corduroy  trousers 
of  a  faded  chewing-gum  tint.  And  they  were  new 

—  showing  that  this  tint  did  not  come  by  calamity, 
but  was   intentional;    the  very  ugliest  color  I  have 
ever  seen.     A  gaunt,  shackly  country  lout  six  feet 
high,  in  battered  gray  slouched  hat  with  wide  brim, 
and  old  resin-colored  breeches,   had  on    a,  hideous 
brand-new  woolen  coat  which  was  imitation  tiger  skin 

—  wavy  broad  stripes  of  dazzling  yellow  and   deep 
brown.      I  thought  he  ought  to  be  hanged,  and  asked 
the  stationmaster  if  it  could  be  arranged.     He  said 
no ;    and   not  only  that,  but  said   it  rudely ;   said   it 
with   a  quite    unnecessary  show    of   feeling.     Then 
he  muttered   something  about  my  being  a  jackass, 
and  walked    away  and    pointed    me  out    to  people, 
and  did  everything  he  could   to  turn  public  senti 
ment  against   me.     It   is  what   one  gets  for  trying 
to  do  good. 


390  Following  the  Equator 

In  the  train  that  day  a  passenger  told  me  some 
more  about  Boer  life  out  in  the  lonely  veldt.  He 
said  the  Boer  gets  up  early  and  sets  his  '  *  niggers  ' ' 
at  their  tasks  (pasturing  the  cattle,  and  watching 
them)  ;  eats,  smokes,  drowses,  sleeps;  toward  even 
ing  superintends  the  milking,  etc.;  eats,  smokes, 
drowses;  goes  to  bed  at  early  candlelight  in  the 
fragrant  clothes  he  (and  she)  have  worn  all  day  and 
every  week-day  for  years.  I  remember  that  last 
detail,  in  Olive  Schreiner's  "  Story  of  an  African 
Farm."  And  the  passenger  told  me  that  the  Boers 
were  justly  noted  for  their  hospitality.  He  told  me 
a  story  about  it.  He  said  that  his  grace  the  Bishop 
of  a  certain  See  was  once  making  a  business- 
progress  through  the  tavernless  veldt,  and  one  night 
he  stopped  with  a  Boer;  after  supper  was  shown  to 
bed;  he  undressed,  weary  and  worn  out,  and  was 
soon  sound  asleep;  in  the  night  he  woke  up  feeling 
crowded  and  suffocated,  and  found  the  old  Boer  and 
his  fat  wife  in  bed  with  him,  one  on  each  side,  with 
all  their  clothes  on,  and  snoring.  He  had  to  stay 
there  and  stand  it  —  awake  and  suffering  —  until 
toward  dawn,  when  sleep  again  fell  upon  him  for  an 
hour.  Then  he  woke  again.  The  Boer  was  gone, 
but  the  wife  was  still  at  his  side. 

Those  Reformers  detested  that  Boer  prison ;  they 
were  not  used  to  cramped  quarters  and  tedious 
hours,  and  weary  idleness,  and  early  to  bed,  and 
limited  movement,  and  arbitrary  and  irritating  rules, 
and  the  absence  of  the  luxuries  which  wealth  com- 


Following  the  Equator  391 

forts  the  day  and  the  night  with,.  The  confinement 
told  upon  their  bodies  and  their  spirits;  still,  they 
were  superior  men,  and  they  made  the  best  that  was 
to  be  made  of  the  circumstances.  Their  wives  smug 
gled  delicacies  to  them,  which  helped  to  smooth  the 
way  down  for  the  prison  fare. 

In  the  train  Mr.  B.  told  me  that  the  Boer  jail- 
guards  treated  the  black  prisoners  —  even  political 
ones  —  mercilessly.  An  African  chief  and  his  fol 
lowing  had  been  kept  there  nine  months  without 
trial,  and  during  all  that  time  they  had  been  without 
shelter  from  rain  and  sun.  He  said  that  one  day  the 
guards  put  a  big  black  in  the  stocks  for  dashing  his 
soup  on  the  ground  ;  they  stretched  his  legs  painfully 
wide  apart,  and  set  him  with  his  back  down  hill ;  he 
could  not  endure  it,  and  put  back  his  hands  upon 
the  slope  for  a  support.  The  guard  ordered  him  to 
withdraw  the  support — and  kicked  him  in  the  back. 
11  Then,"  said  Mr.  B.,  "  the  powerful  black  wrenched 
the  stocks  asunder  and  went  for  the  guard ;  a  Reform 
prisoner  pulled  him  off,  and  thrashed  the  guard 
himself." 


CHAPTER   XXXIII. 

The  very  ink  with  which  all  history  is  written  is  merely  fluid  prejudice. 
— PudcTnhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

There  isn't  a  Parallel  of  Latitude  but  thinks  it  would  have  been  the  Equa» 
tor  if  it  had  had  its  rights.— Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

NEXT  to  Mr.  Rhodes,  to  me  the  most  interesting 
convulsion  of  nature  in  South  Africa  was  the 
diamond-crater.  The  Rand  gold-fields  are  a  stu 
pendous  marvel,  and  they  make  all  other  gold-fields 
small,  but  I  was  not  a  stranger  to  gold-mining;  the 
veldt  was  a  noble  thing  to  see,  but  it  was  only 
another  and  lovelier  variety  of  our  Great  Plains ;  the 
natives  were  very  far  from  being  uninteresting,  but 
they  were  not  new;  and  as  for  the  towns,  I  could 
find  my  way  without  a  guide  through  the  most  of 
them  because  I  had  learned  the  streets,  under  other 
names,  in  towns  just  like  them  in  other  lands ;  but 
the  diamond  mine  was  a  wholly  fresh  thing,  a  splen 
did  and  absorbing  novelty.  Very  few  people  in  the 
world  have  seen  the  diamond  in  its  home.  It  has 
but  three  or  four  homes  in  the  world,  whereas  gold 
has  a  million.  It  is  worth  while  to  journey  around 
the  globe  to  see  anything  which  can  truthfully  be 

(392) 


Following  the  Equator  393 

called  a  novelty,  and  the  diamond  mine  is  the  greatest 
and  most  select  and  restricted  novelty  which  the 
globe  has  in  stock. 

The  Kimberley  diamond  deposits  were  discovered 
about  1869,  I  think.  When  everything  is  taken  into 
consideration,  the  wonder  is  that  they  were  not  dis 
covered  five  thousand  years  ago  and  made  familiar 
to  the  African  world  for  the  rest  of  time.  For  this 
reason  the  first  diamonds  were  found  on  the  surface 
of  the  ground.  They  were  smooth  and  limpid,  and 
in  the  sunlight  they  vomited  fire.  They  were  the 
very  things  which  an  African  savage  of  any  era 
would  value  above  every  other  thing  in  the  world 
excepting  a  glass  bead.  For  two  or  three  centuries 
we  have  been  buying  his  lands,  his  cattle,  his  neigh 
bor,  and  any  other  thing  he  had  for  sale,  for  glass 
beads :  and  so  it  is  strange  that  he  was  indifferent  to 
the  diamonds  —  for  he  must  have  picked  them  up 
many  and  many  a  time.  It  would  not  occur  to  him  to 
try  to  sell  them  to  whites,  of  course,  since  the  whites 
already  had  plenty  of  glass  beads,  and  more  fashion 
ably  shaped,  too,  than  these;  but  one  would  think 
that  the  poorer  sort  of  black,  who  could  not  afford 
real  glass,  would  have  been  humbly  content  to 
decorate  himself  with  the  imitation,  and  that  pres 
ently  the  white  trader  would  notice  the  things,  and 
dimly  suspect,  and  carry  some  of  them  home,  and 
find  out  what  they  were,  and  at  once  empty  a  multi 
tude  of  fortune-hunters  into  Africa.  There  are 
many  strange  things  in  human  history ;  one  of  the 


394  Following  the  Equator 

strangest  is  that  the  sparkling  diamonds  laid  there 
so  long  without  exciting  any  one's  interest. 

The  revelation  came  at  last  by  accident.  In  a 
Boer's  hut  out  in  the  wide  solitude  of  the  plains,  a 
traveling  stranger  noticed  a  child  playing  with  a 
bright  object,  and  was  told  it  was  a  piece  of  glass 
which  had  been  found  in  the  veldt.  The  stranger 
bought  it  for  a  trifle  and  carried  it  away;  and  being 
without  honor,  made  another  stranger  believe  it  was 
a  diamond,  and  so  got  $125  out  of  him  for  it,  and 
was  as  pleased  with  himself  as  if  he  had  done  a 
righteous  thing.  In  Paris  the  wronged  stranger 
sold  it  to  a  pawnshop  for  $10,000,  who  sold  it 
to  a  countess  for  $90,000,  who  sold  it  to  a 
brewer  for  $800,000,  who  traded  it  to  a  king  for 
a  dukedom  and  a  pedigree,  and  the  king  "put 
it  up  the  spout,  "f  I  know  these  particulars  to 
be  correct. 

The  news  flew  around,  and  the  South  African 
diamond-boom  began.  The  original  traveler  —  the 
dishonest  one  —  now  remembered  that  he  had  once 
seen  a  Boer  teamster  chocking  his  wagon-wheel  on 
a  steep  grade  with  a  diamond  as  large  as  a  football, 
and  he  laid  aside  his  occupations  and  started  out  to 
hunt  for  it,  but  not  with  the  intention  of  cheating 
anybody  out  of  $125  with  it,  for  he  had  reformed. 


Following  the  Equator  395 

We  now  come  to  matters  more  didactic.  Dia 
monds  are  not  imbedded  in  rock  ledges  fifty  miles 
long,  like  the  Johannesburg  gold,  but  are  distributed 
through  the  rubbish  of  a  filled-up  well,  so  to  speak. 
The  well  is  rich,  its  walls  are  sharply  defined ;  out 
side  of  the  walls  are  no  diamonds.  The  well  is  a 
crater,  and  a  large  one.  Before  it  had  been  meddled 
with,  its  surface  was  even  with  the  level  plain,  and 
there  was  no  sign  to  suggest  that  it  was  there.  The 
pasturage  covering  the  surface  of  the  Kimberley 
crater  was  sufficient  for  the  support  of  a  cow,  and 
the  pasturage  underneath  was  sufficient  for  the  sup 
port  of  a  kingdom ;  but  the  cow  did  not  know  it, 
and  lost  her  chance. 

The  Kimberley  crater  is  roomy  enough  to  admit 
the  Roman  Coliseum ;  the  bottom  of  the  crater  has 
not  been  reached,  and  no  one  can  tell  how  far  down 
in  the  bowels  of  the  earth  it  goes.  Originally,  it 
was  a  perpendicular  hole  packed  solidly  full  of  blue 
rock  or  cement,  and  scattered  through  that  blue 
mass,  like  raisins  in  a  pudding,  were  the  diamonds. 
As  deep  down  in  the  earth  as  the  blue  stuff  extends, 
so  deep  will  the  diamonds  be  found. 

There  are  three  or  four  other  celebrated  craters 
near  by  —  a  circle  three  miles  in  diameter  would 
enclose  them  all.  They  are  owned  by  the  De  Beeis 
Company,  a  consolidation  of  diamond  properties 
arranged  by  Mr,  Rhod. ...  twelve  or  fourteen  years 
ago.  The  De  Beers  owns  other  craters;  they  are 
under  the  grass,  but  the  De  Beers  knows  where  they 


396  Following  the  Equator 

are,  and  will  open  them  some  day,  if  the  market 
should  require  it. 

Originally,  the  diamond  deposits  were  the  prop 
erty  of  the  Orange  Free  State;  but  a  judicious 
"rectification"  of  the  boundary  line  shifted  them 
over  into  the  British  territory  of  Cape  Colony.  A 
high  official  of  the  Free  State  told  me  that  the  sum 
of  $400,000  was  handed  to  his  commonwealth  as  a 
compromise,  or  indemnity,  or  something  of  the 
sort,  and  that  he  thought  his  commonwealth  did 
wisely  to  take  the  money  and  keep  out  of  a  dispute, 
since  the  power  was  all  on  the  one  side  and  the 
weakness  all  on  the  other.  The  De  Beers  Company 
dig  out  $400,000  worth  of  diamonds  per  week,  now. 
The  Cape  got  the  territory,  but  no  profit;  for  Mr. 
Rhodes  and  the  Rothschilds  and  the  other  De  Beers 
people  own  the  mines,  and  they  pay  no  taxes. 

In  our  day  the  mines  are  worked  upon  scientific 
principles,  under  the  guidance  of  the  ablest  mining- 
engineering  talent  procurable  in  America.  There 
are  elaborate  works  for  reducing  the  blue  rock  and 
passing  it  through  one  process  after  another  until 
every  diamond  it  contains  has  been  hunted  down 
and  secured.  I  watched  the  "  concentrators "  at 
work  —  big  tanks  containing  mud  and  water  and 
invisible  diamonds  —  and  was  told  that  each  could 
stir  and  churn  and  properly  treat  300  carloads  of 
mud  per  day —  1,600  pounds  to  the  carload  —  and 
reduce  it  to  three  carloads  of  slush.  I  saw  the 
three  carloads  of  slush  taken  to  the  "  pulsators " 


Following  the  Equator  397 

and  there  reduced  to  a  quarter  of  a  load  of  nice 
clean  dark-colored  sand.  Then  I  followed  it  to  the 
sorting  tables  and  saw  the  men  deftly  and  swiftly 
spread  it  out  and  brush  it  about  and  seize  the  dia 
monds  as  they  showed  up.  I  assisted,  and  once  I 
found  a  diamond  half  as  large  as  an  almond.  It  is 
an  exciting  kind  of  fishing,  and  you  feel  a  fine  thrill 
of  pleasure  every  time  you  detect  the  glow  of  one 
of  those  limpid  pebbles  through  the  veil  of  dark 
sand.  I  would  like  to  spend  my  Saturday  holidays 
in  that  charming  sport  every  now  and  then.  Of 
course  there  are  disappointments.  Sometimes  you 
find  a  diamond  which  is  not  a  diamond ;  it  is  only  a 
quartz  crystal  or  some  such  worthless  thing.  The 
expert  can  generally  distinguish  it  from  the  precious 
stone  which  it  is  counterfeiting;  but  if  he  is  in  doubt 
he  lays  it  on  a  flatiron  and  hits  it  with  a  sledge 
hammer.  If  it  is  a  diamond  it  holds  its  own ;  if  it 
is  anything  else,  it  is  reduced  to  powder.  I  liked 
that  experiment  very  much,  and  did  not  tire  of 
repetitions  of  it.  It  was  full  of  enjoyable  apprehen 
sions,  unmarred  by  any  personal  sense  of  risk.  The 
De  Beers  concern  treats  8,000  car-loads  —  about 
6,000  tons  —  of  blue  rock  per  day,  and  the  result  is 
three  pounds  of  diamonds.  Value,  uncut,  $50,000 
to  $70,000.  After  cutting,  they  will  weigh  con 
siderably  less  than  a  pound,  but  will  be  worth  four 
or  five  times  as  much  as  they  were  before. 

All  the  plain  around  that  region  is  spread  over,  a 

foot  deep,  with  blue  rock,  placed  there  by  the  com- 

26** 


398  Following  the  Equator 

pany,  and  looks  like  a  plowed  field.  Exposure  foi 
a  length  of  time  makes  the  rock  easier  to  work  than 
it  is  when  it  comes  out  of  the  mine.  If  mining 
should  cease  now,  the  supply  of  rock  spread  over 
those  fields  would  furnish  the  usual  8,000  car-loads 
per  day  to  the  separating  works  during  three  years. 
The  fields  are  fenced  and  watched;  and  at  night 
they  are  under  the  constant  inspection  of  lofty  elec 
tric  searchlight.  They  contain  fifty  or  sixty  million 
dollars'  worth  of  diamonds,  and  there  is  an  abun 
dance  of  enterprising  thieves  around. 

In  the  dirt  of  the  Kimberley  streets  there  is  much 
hidden  wealth.  Some  time  ago  the  people  were 
granted  the  privilege  of  a  free  wash-up.  There  was 
a  general  rush,  the  work  was  done  with  thorough 
ness,  and  a  good  harvest  of  diamonds  was  gathered. 

The  deep  mining  is  done  by  natives.  There  are 
many  hundreds  of  them.  They  live  in  quarters 
built  around  the  inside  of  a  great  compound.  They 
are  a  jolly  and  good-natured  lot,  and  accommo 
dating.  They  performed  a  war-dance  for  us,  which 
was  the  wildest  exhibition  I  have  ever  seen.  They 
are  not  allowed  outside  of  the  compound  during 
their  term  of  service  —  three  months,  I  think  it  is, 
as  a  rule.  They  go  down  the  shaft,  stand  their 
watch,  come  up  again,  are  searched,  and  go  to  bed 
or  to  their  amusements  in  the  compound ;  and  this 
routine  they  repeat,  day  in  and  day  out. 

It  is  thought  that  they  do  not  now  steal  many 
diamonds  —  successfully.  They  used  to  swallow 


Following  the  Equator  399 

them,  and  find  other  ways  of  concealing  them,  but 
the  white  man  found  ways  of  beating  their  various 
games.  One  man  cut  his  leg  and  shoved  a  diamond 
into  the  wound,  but  even  that  project  did  not  suc 
ceed.  When  they  find  a  fine  large  diamond  they  are 
more  likely  to  report  it  than  to  steal  it,  for  in  the 
former  case  they  get  a  reward,  and  in  the  latter  they 
are  quite  apt  to  merely  get  into  trouble.  Some 
years  ago,  in  a  mine  not  owned  by  the  De  Beers,  a 
black  found  what  has  been  claimed  to  be  the  largest 
diamond  known  to  the  world's  history;  and  as  a 
reward  he  was  released  from  service  and  given  a 
blanket,  a  horse,  and  five  hundred  dollars.  It  made 
him  a  Vanderbilt.  He  could  buy  four  wives,  and 
have  money  left.  Four  wives  are  an  ample  support 
for  a  native.  With  four  wives  he  is  wholly  in 
dependent,  and  need  never  do  a  stroke  of  work 
again. 

That  great  diamond  weighs  971  carats.  Some 
say  it  is  as  big  as  a  piece  of  alum,  others  say  it  is  as 
large  as  a  bite  of  rock  candy,  but  the  best  authorities 
agree  that  it  is  almost  exactly  the  size  of  a  chunk  of 
ice.  But  those  details  are  not  important;  and  in 
my  opinion  not  trustworthy.  It  has  a  flaw  in  it, 
otherwise  it  would  be  of  incredible  value.  As  it  is, 
it  is  held  to  be  worth  $2,000,000.  After  cutting  it 
ought  to  be  worth  from  $5,000,000  to  $8,000,000, 
therefore  persons  desiring  to  save  money  should  buy 
it  now.  It  is  owned  by  a  syndicate,  and  apparently 
there  is  no  satisfactory  market  for  it.  It  is  earning 


400  Following  the  Equator 

nothing;  it  is  eating  its  head  off.  Up  to  this  time 
it  has  made  nobody  rich  but  the  native  who  found  it. 

He  found  it  in  a  mine  which  was  being  worked  by 
contract.  That  is  to  say,  a  company  had  bought 
the  privilege  of  taking  from  the  mine  5,000,000  car 
loads  of  blue-rock,  for  a  sum  down  and  a  royalty. 
Their  speculation  had  not  paid ;  but  on  the  very  day 
that  their  privilege  ran  out  that  native  found  the 
$2,ooo,ooo-diamond  and  handed  it  over  to  them. 
Even  the  diamond  culture  is  not  without  its  romantic 
episodes. 

The  Koh-i-Noor  is  a  large  diamond,  and  valuable; 
but  it  cannot  compete  in  these  matters  with  three 
which  —  according  to  legend  —  are  among  the  crown 
trinkets  of  Portugal  and  Russia.  One  of  these  is 
held  to  be  worth  $20,000,000;  another,  $25,000,- 
OOO,  and  the  third  something  over  $28,000,000. 

Those  are  truly  wonderful  diamonds,  whether  they 
exist  or  not;  and  yet  they  are  of  but  little  impor 
tance  by  comparison  with  the  one  wherewith  the  Boer 
wagoner  chocked  his  wheel  on  that  steep  grade  as 
heretofore  referred  to.  In  Kimberley  I  had  some 
conversation  with  the  man  who  saw  the  Boer  do  that 
—  an  incident  which  had  occurred  twenty-seven  or 
twenty-eight  years  before  I  had  my  talk  with  him. 
He  assured  me  that  that  diamond's  value  could  have 
been  over  a  billion  dollars,  but  not  under  it.  I 
believed  him,  because  he  had  devoted  twenty-seven 
years  to  hunting  for  it,  and  was  in  a  position  to 
know. 


Following  the  Equator  401 

A  fitting  and  interesting  finish  to  an  examination 
of  the  tedious  and  laborious  and  costly  processes 
whereby  the  diamonds  are  gotten  out  of  the  deeps  of 
the  earth  and  freed  fiom  the  base  stuffs  which  im 
prison  them  is  the  visit  to  the  De  Beers  offices  in 
the  town  of  Kimberley,  where  the  result  of  each 
day's  mining  is  brought  every  day,  and  weighed, 
assorted,  valued,  and  deposited  in  safes  against 
shipping-day.  An  unknown  and  unaccredited  per 
son  cannot  get  into  that  place ;  and  it  seemed  ap 
parent  from  the  generous  supply  of  warning  and 
protective  and  prohibitory  signs  that  were  posted  all 
about  that  not  even  the  known  and  accredited  can 
steal  diamonds  there  without  inconvenience. 

We  saw  the  day's  output  —  shining  little  nests  of 
diamonds,  distributed  a  foot  apart,  along  a  counter, 
each  nest  reposing  upon  a  sheet  of  white  paper. 
That  day's  catch  was  about  $70,000  worth.  In  the 
course  of  a  year  half  a  ton  of  diamonds  pass  under 
the  scales  there  and  sleep  on  that  counter;  the  re 
sulting  money  is  $18,000,000  or  $20,000,000. 
Profit,  about  $12,000,000. 

Young  girls  were  doing  the  sorting  —  a  nice, 
clean,  dainty,  and  probably  distressing  employment. 
Every  day  ducal  incomes  sift  and  sparkle  through 
the  fingers  of  those  young  girls ;  yet  they  go  to  bed 
at  night  as  poor  as  they  were  when  they  got  up  in 
the  morning.  The  same  thing  next  day,  and  all  the 
days. 

They  are  beautiful  things,  those  diamonds,  in  their 
26 


402  Following  the  Equator 

native  state.  They  are  of  various  shapes;  they  have 
flat  surfaces,  rounded  borders,  and  never  a  sharp 
edge.  They  are  of  all  colors  and  shades  of  color, 
from  dewdrop  white  to  actual  black;  and  their 
smooth  and  rounded  surfaces  and  contours,  variety 
of  color,  and  transparent  limpidity,  make  them  look 
like  piles  of  assorted  candies.  A  very  light  straw 
color  is  their  commonest  tint.  It  seemed  to  me 
that  these  uncut  gems  must  be  more  beautiful  than 
any  cut  ones  could  be ;  but  when  a  collection  of  cut 
ones  was  brought  out,  I  saw  my  mistake.  Nothing 
is  so  beautiful  as  a  rose  diamond  with  the  light 
playing  through  it,  except  that  uncostly  thing 
which  is  just  like  it  —  wavy  sea-water  with  the  sun 
light  playing  through  it  and  striking  a  white-sand 
bottom. 

Before  the  middle  of  July  we  reached  Cape  Town, 
and  the  end  of  our  African  journeyings.  And  well 
satisfied ;  for,  towering  above  us  was  Table  Moun 
tain  —  a  reminder  that  we  had  now  seen  each  and 
all  of  the  great  features  of  South  Africa  except  Mr. 
Cecil  Rhodes.  I  realize  that  that  is  a  large  excep 
tion.  I  know  quite  well  that  whether  Mr.  Rhodes  is 
the  lofty  and  worshipful  patriot  and  statesman  that 
multitudes  believe  him  to  be,  or  Satan  come  again, 
as  the  rest  of  the  world  account  him,  he  is  still  the 
most  imposing  figure  in  the  British  empire  outside 
of  England.  When  he  stands  on  the  Cape  of  Good 
Hope,  hi*  shadow  falls  to  the  Zambesi.  He  is  the 
only  colonial  in  the  British  dominions  whose  goings 


Following  the  Equator  403 

and  comings  are  chronicled  and  discussed  under  all 
the  globe's  meridians,  and  whose  speeches,  un- 
clipped,  are  cabled  from  the  ends  of  the  earth;  and 
he  is  the  only  unroyal  outsider  whose  arrival  in  Lon 
don  can  compete  for  attention  with  an  eclipse. 

That  he  is  an  extraordinary  man,  and  not  an 
accident  of  fortune,  not  even  his  dearest  South 
African  enemies  were  willing  to  deny,  so  far  as  I 
heard  them  testify.  The  whole  South  African  world 
seemed  to  stand  in  a  kind  of  shuddering  awe  of  him, 
friend  and  enemy  alike.  It  was  as  if  he  were 
deputy-God  on  the  one  side,  deputy-Satan  on  the 
other,  proprietor  of  the  people,  able  to  make  them 
or  ruin  them  by  his  breath,  worshiped  by  many, 
hated  by  many,  but  blasphemed  by  none  among  the 
judicious,  and  even  by  the  indiscreet  in  guarded 
whispers  only. 

What  is  the  secret  of  his  formidable  supremacy? 
One  says  it  is  his  prodigious  wealth  — a  wealth 
whose  drippings  in  salaries  and  in  other  ways  sup 
port  multitudes  and  make  them  his  interested  and 
loyal  vassals;  another  says  it  is  his  personal  mag 
netism  and  his  persuasive  tongue,  and  that  these 
hypnotize  and  make  happy  slaves  of  all  that  drift 
within  the  circle  of  their  influence ;  another  says  it 
is  his  majestic  ideas,  his  vast  schemes  for  the  terri 
torial  aggrandizement  of  England,  his  patriotic  and 
unselfish  ambition  to  spread  her  beneficent  protec 
tion  and  her  just  rule  over  the  pagan  wastes  of 
Africa  and  make  luminous  the  African  darkness  with 


404  Following  the  Equator 

the  glory  of  her  name ;  and  another  says  he  wants 
the  earth  and  wants  it  for  his  own,  and  that  the 
belief  that  he  will  get  it  and  let  his  friends  in  on  the 
ground  floor  is  the  secret  that  rivets  so  many  eyes 
upon  him  and  keeps  him  in  the  zenith  where  the 
view  is  unobstructed. 

One  may  take  his  choice.  They  are  all  the  same 
price.  One  fact  is  sure :  he  keeps  his  prominence 
and  a  vast  following,  no  matter  what  he  does.  He 
"  deceives"  the  Duke  of  Fife  —  it  is  the  Duke's 
word  —  but  that  does  not  destroy  the  Duke's  loyalty 
to  him.  He  tricks  the  Reformers  into  immense 
trouble  with  his  Raid,  but  the  most  of  them  believe 
he  meant  well.  He  weeps  over  the  harshly-taxed 
Johannesburgers  and  makes  them  his  friends ;  at  the 
same  time  he  taxes  his  Charter-settlers  50  per  cent., 
and  so  wins  their  affection  and  their  confidence  that 
they  are  squelched  with  despair  at  every  rumor  that 
the  Charter  is  to  be  annulled.  He  raids  and  rob? 
and  slays  and  enslaves  the  Matabele  and  gets  worlds 
of  Charter-Christian  applause  for  it.  He  has  be 
guiled  England  into  buying  Charter  waste  paper  for 
Bank  of  England  notes,  ton  for  ton,  and  the  ravished 
still  burn  incense  to  him  as  the  Eventual  God  of 
Plenty.  He  has  done  everything  he  could  think  of 
to  pull  himself  down  to  the  ground ;  he  has  done 
more  than  enough  to  pull  cixteen  common-run  great 
men  down;  yet  there  he  stands,  to  this  day,  upon 
his  dizzy  summit  under  the  dome  of  the  sky,  an 
apparent  permanency,  the  marvel  of  the  time,  the 


Following  the  Equator  405 

mystery  of  the   age,    an   Archangel  with  wings  to 
half  the  world,  Satan  with  a  tail  to  the  other  half. 

I  admire  him,  I  frankly  confess  it;  and  when  his 
time  comes  I  shall  buy  a  piece  of  the  rope  for  a 
keepsake. 


CONCLUSION 

I  have  traveled  more  than  any  one  else,  and  I  have  noticed  tnat  even  the 
angels  speak  English  with  an  accent. — Pudd'nhead  Wilson's  New  Calendar. 

I  SAW  Table  Rock,  anyway  —  a  majestic  pile.  It 
is  3,000  feet  high.  It  is  also  17,000  feet  high. 
These  figures  may  be  relied  upon.  I  got  them  in 
Cape  Town  from  the  two  best-informed  citizens, 
men  who  had  made  Table  Rock  the  study  of  their 
lives.  And  I  saw  Table  Bay,  so  named  for  its 
levelness.  I  saw  the  Castle  —  built  by  the  Dutch 
East  India  Company  three  hundred  years  ago  — 
where  the  Commanding  General  lives;  I  saw  St. 
Simon's  Bay,  where  the  Admiral  lives.  I  saw  the 
Government,  also  the  Parliament,  where  they  quar 
reled  in  two  languages  when  I  was  there,  and  agreed 
in  none.  I  saw  the  club.  I  saw  and  explored  the 
beautiful  sea-girt  drives  that  wind  about  the  moun 
tains  and  through  the  paradise  where  the  villas  are. 
Also  I  saw  some  of  the  fine  old  Dutch  mansions, 
pleasant  homes  of  the  early  times,  pleasant  homes 
to-day,  and  enjoyed  the  privilege  of  their  hos 
pitalities. 

And  just  before  I  sailed  I  saw  in  one  of  them  a 
quaint  old    picture   which  was  a  link  in  a  curious 

(406) 


Following  the  Equator  407 

romance—  a  picture  of  a  pale,  intellectual  young 
man  in  a  pink  coat  with  a  high  black  collar.  It 
was  a  portrait  of  Dr.  James  Barry,  a  military  surgeon 
who  came  out  to  the  Cape  fifty  years  ago  with  his 
regiment.  He  was  a  wild  young  fellow,  and  wras 
guilty  of  various  kinds  of  misbehavior.  He  was 
several  times  reported  to  headquarters  in  England, 
and  it  was  in  each  case  expected  that  orders  would 
come  out  to  deal  with  him  promptly  and  severely, 
but  for  some  mysterious  reason  no  orders  of  any 
kind  ever  came  back  —  nothing  came  but  just  an 
impressive  silence.  This  made  him  an  imposing 
and  uncanny  wonder  to  the  town. 

Next,  he  was  promoted  —  away  up.  He  was  made 
Medical  Superintendent  General,  and  transferred  to 
India.  Presently  he  was  back  at  the  Cape  again  and 
at  his  escapades  once  more.  There  were  plenty  of 
pretty  girls,  but  none  of  them  caught  him,  none  of 
them  could  get  hold  of  his  heart ;  evidently  he  was 
not  a  marrying  man.  And  that  was  another  marvel, 
another  puzzle,  and  made  no  end  of  perplexed  talk. 
Once  he  was  called  in  the  night,  an  obstetric  service, 
to  do  what  he  could  for  a  woman  who  was  believed 
to  be  dying.  He  was  prompt  and  scientific,  and 
saved  both  mother  and  child.  There  are  other 
instances  of  record  which  testify  to  his  mastership  of 
his  profession ;  and  many  which  testify  to  his  love 
of  it  and  his  devotion  to  it.  Among  other  adven 
tures  of  his  was  a  duel  of  a  desperate  sort,  fought 
with  swords,  at  the  Castle.  He  killed  his  man. 


408  Following  the  Equator 

The  child  heretofore  mentioned  as  having  been 
saved  by  Dr.  Barry  so  long  ago,  was  named  tor 
him,  and  still  lives  in  Cape  Town.  He  had  Dr. 
Barry's  portrait  painted,  and  gave  it  to  the  gentle 
man  in  whose  old  Dutch  house  I  saw  it  —  the  quaint 
figure  in  pink  coat  and  high  black  collar. 

The  story  seems  to  be  arriving  nowhere.  But 
that  is  because  I  have  not  finished.  Dr.  Barry  died 
in  Cape  Town  30  years  ago.  It  was  then  discov 
ered  that  he  was  a  woman. 

The  legend  goes  that  inquiries  —  soon  silenced 
—  developed  the  fact  that  she  was  a  daughter  of  a 
great  English  house,  and  that  that  was  why  her  Cape 
wildnesses  brought  no  punishment  and  got  no  notice 
when  reported  to  the  government  at  home.  Her 
name  was  an  alias.  She  had  disgraced  herself  with 
her  people ;  so  she  chose  to  change  her  name  and 
her  sex  and  take  a  new  start  in  the  world. 

We  sailed  on  the  I5th  of  July  in  the  Norman,  a 
beautiful  ship,  perfectly  appointed.  The  voyage  to 
England  occupied  a  short  fortnight,  without  a  stop 
except  at  Madeira.  A  good  and  restful  voyage  for 
tired  people,  and  there  were  several  of  us.  I  seemed 
to  have  been  lecturing  a  thousand  years,  though  it 
was  only  a  twelvemonth,  and  a  considerable  number 
of  the  others  were  Reformers  who  were  fagged  out 
with  their  five  months  of  seclusion  in  the  Pretoria 
prison. 

Our  trip  around  the  earth  ended  at  the  Southamp 
ton  pier,  where  we  embarked  thirteen  months  before. 


Following  the  Equator  409 

It  seemed  a  fine  and  large  thing  to  have  accom 
plished  —  the  circumnavigation  of  this  great  globe 
in  that  little  time,  and  I  was  privately  proud  of  it. 
For  a  moment.  Then  came  one  of  those  vanity- 
snubbing  astronomical  reports  from  the  Observatory- 
people,  whereby  it  appeared  that  another  great  body 
of  light  had  lately  flamed  up  in  the  remotenesses  of 
space  which  was  traveling  at  a  gait  which  would 
enable  it  to  do  all  that  I  had  done  in  a  minute  and 
a  half.  Human  pride  is  not  worth  while ;  there  is 
always  something  lying  in  wait  to  take  the  wind  out 
of  it. 


I 


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